Would you folks use hibernate in a read only scenario? By this, I mean, is hibernate the appropriate tool for querying a database without worrying about writing data to the database? I'm new to the technology and love how it works for persisting objects I build. What I want to know is, should I be using hibernate to grab data from the database and build my objects for me?

Personally, I'd say it depends on the nature of the usage. I would say definitely not for decision support type usages. But if its simple reporting or something along those lines it still makes sense to a degree.

If your requirements don't change (much) you may just want a simplified database wrapper such as IBatis.

i'm working on a "read only" project, we'll bench both full jdbc and hibernate prototypes.
The goal is to retrieve a lot of data and "give it" to a web service.

JDBC proto:
+ optimized queries given by BDA
+ give exactly what is needed
- if tomorrow they ask us to add other table fields.... ughhh have to study again the 50 lines query
- have to know about caching since the data are updated 2 times per day

Hibernate proto:
+ short time of development
+ pluggable cache, and with it incredible performances if the objects have been loaded...
+ you can easily update graph of object definition (so the future needs)
+/- you can optimized sql generated by knowing all about HQL (not always easy but forum helps a lot)
+/- you can reuse the optimized dba query by using SQLQuery API, but in this case.... "why using hibernate?"
- you may need to map non business objets, i'm thinking about parameter tables, for example many-to-one doesn't allow a "where attribute" which could filter an association on a parameter which is only updated every 2 years, so you have to map it. But i'm looking at the formula option... it could solve this need

If this can help you....


Anthony