Good morning,

I am trying to follow the hibernate "tutorial" (http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/core/3. ... l-firstapp), but running into many problems due to the fact that many steps are left out, or steps are just plain wrong.

For instance, in the first paragraph alone, there is an assertion that "The tutorial is based on an earlier tutorial developed by Michael Gloegl. All code is contained in the tutorials/web directory of the project source." I have downloaded the tutorial files (hibernate-tutorial.zip), and there is no tutorials directory, let alone a sub-directory of it. So my first question is, where does the code actually reside?

Second, an example of missing steps would be the last sentence of the first paragraph of section 1.1.1. It states: "As this tutorial is to be a web application, we will be creating and making use of src/main/java, src/main/resources and src/main/webapp directories." The listed directories are relative path names, but there is no mention of what they are relative to. The answer is probably obvious to anyone that has completed even one hibernate project, but to those of us that have completed zero, the answer is unknown, and apparently unknowable. So my next question is, what is the correct parent directory of these relative directories?

These are major issues that one encounters in just the first two pages of the "tutorial". By definition, a tutorial explains how to accomplish a task, providing all of the necessary instructions for the user of the tutorial to complete the task. This "tutorial" fails to accomplish these goals, and it begins failing from the very beginning.

FWIW, I see that there are other threads regarding the shortcomings of the "tutorial" on this forum. In one of the older ones, it is mentioned that the problems have been known, but as this is open source we should be forgiving. I couldn't disagree more. While there is nothing wrong with something being broken, there is something definitely wrong for a "tutorial" to be this broken and remain available - with no disclaimer indicating that the user is likely to encounter problems. This is worse than providing no information at all, it is providing mis-information. And to make matters worse, the preface to the reference document suggests "Evangelizing Hibernate within your organization." Why would anyone want to do that? Just based on the fact that this buggy tutorial is allowed to remain, I would be very leery of taking this advice. There is no telling what other known bugs are allowed to remain, and remain in an undocumented state.

In the meantime, if someone has struggled through this document and actually gotten things to work, would they be so kind as to provide either the correct code in the correct paths, or instructions on the proper layout of the code files? And BTW, I would be more than happy to share as well, but I can't get a single thing to work. All I've managed to do so far is spend two days generating error messages. I am required to become knowledgeable in hibernate, but with no clear starting point I fear I will never succeed, and my frustration is mounting to the point that I am seeking alternatives.

Thanks,
Nelson