Hello everyone,
I hope that there are some people out there who can clarify this licensing question for me.
Until now I have been programming a web application which is based only on libraries using the Apache License.
I have played a little with Hibernate and find it to be one of the best tools for persisting my data. As of today I have not used any LGPL based software, because of some irregularities in the license. I want to distribute my web app under a commercial license, but think that as soon as I use an LGPL based library I also have to distribute my web app under LGPL.

My believe is strengthened by the following article of the LGPL:
A program that contains no derivative of any portion of the Library, but is designed to work with the Library by being compiled or linked with it, is called a "work that uses the Library". Such a work, in isolation, is not a derivative work of the Library, and therefore falls outside the scope of this License.
However, linking a "work that uses the Library" with the Library creates an executable that is a derivative of the Library (because it contains portions of the Library), rather than a "work that uses the library". The executable is therefore covered by this License. Section 6 states terms for distribution of such executables.

Since my web app is using an LGPL library it therefore also needs to be LGPL.
Is this correct?

I would appreciate some hints of other users, who may have encountered the same problem. In the future I will be using Hibernate 3, but for now I am planning to use Hibernate 2, if licensing allows me to do that.
Is there a commercial Hibernate 2 license which I may not be aware of?

Thank you for the link. It clarifies many issues.
However, it only states that I may use the public interfaces, but in order to retrieve and/or instantiate an interface I generally need some kind of FactoryClass, which in turn is a class and not an interface. Is it possibly that this factory is not covered by your interpretation of LGPL?

The use of the unmodified binary of Hibernate has no consequences on the licensing of the application that is using the binary.