Hi I am trying to get my feet wet with OR mapping coming from a background of using straight sql.

Most people on this forum seem to suggest using hibernate with the DAO pattern. here's an excerpt from core j2ee patterns

"when there is little or no business logic in a business operation applications will typically let clients access business data in the data store. For example a presentation tier component can directly access a Data access object. In this scenario there is no notion of an object model in the business tier, Instead the application requirements are fullfilled by a procedural implementation"

does this mean most people choose to externalize the businesslogic from the domain objects and instead use a procedural implementation? Is this the recommended way to use hibernate,
what is the recommended way to add businesslogic to your domain objects?, not use dao's at all but straight calls to the hibernate api's in actions or facades..?

If business logic is encapuslated in a domain model, that is, an object-oriented model of business entities, persistence is externalized to some "persistence manager" interface. This can be Hibernate directly or, if you prefer, hidden behind a DAO facade. Your business facade then calls this persistence layer to load, store and find objects.

this is not easy decision.

I do not like to pollute my domain model with access control,
transaction settings etc. So, there is only some rudimentary
business logic inside ( ensure that child-partent relationship is set
properly and such )

Access control / transaction / more complex bysiness logic
goes into various DAOs ( ususally I have several of them for various puproses )