I am brand new to Hibernate and I was hoping to get some advice. I have an application that is fairly data intensive. I have a java swing client that produces multiple calls to the database to retrieve data. I was wondering if it would be beneficial to use Hibernate in this instance. Currently, we are using straight jdbc. Any help would be great and I would be more than happy to supply any further information needed. Thanks in advance.

Yes , Definitely hibernate is good for your application but before using hibernate or migrating your application to hibernate you have to answers few questions to yourself like.

1)Is your client may change the database like MySQL to oracle ?
2)If your application is already stable then Are you ready to put an extra effort in migration your application to hibernate ?

If the answer of the above questions is "Yes" then you can use the hibernate and it will definitely improve performance when you use hibernate cache.