Hi,
I am newbie to Hibernate.
I am following the Hibernate Getting Started Guide.
Through this guide it seems to me that there are some early decisions to take:

1. Memory database vs Physical database.
2. Not annotations vs Annotations.
3. JPA vs Pure Hibernate.

For 1 and 2 points I deduce that the “right” decision is Physical database (obviously) and Annotation schema.
But for point 3 I doubt about the advantages of using JPA.
Could somebody of the Hibernate community clarify the issue?
What is its contribution to the mixture?

Thanks! (And sorry if it has been answered plenty of times. I haven’t found it in the FAQs)