Some exciting features has been added/enhanced in Hibernate 5.x. Have a quick look.
1. Hibernate Search
Hibernate Search transparently indexes your objects and offers fast regular, full-text and geolocation search. Ease of use and easy clustering are core.
- Full-text search for entities – find by approximation (fuzzy search)
- Cluster-friendly – offers several easy to setup clustering strategies
- Faceting and geolocation – Geolocalized entities are as easy as @Spatial
For more details on Hibernate Search view this.
2. Hibernate Validator
Hibernate Validator comes with a handful of built-in validation rules like Email, Length, NotBlank etc.
Express validation rules in a standardized way using annotation-based constraints and benefit from transparent integration with a wide variety of frameworks.
For more details on Hibernate Validator view this.
3. Improved Java 8 Support
Java 8 date/time data types (JSR 310) are supported and can be validated via @Past and @Future. Also Optional and JavaFX types are supported via an improved ValidatedValueUnwrapper.
4. Hibernate OGM
Just released the first stable version.
5. Bootstrapping API
New bootstrapping API – better determinism, better integration
A few other things:
- Scanning support for non-JPA usage
- NamingStrategy has been removed in favor of a better designed API
- Ability to handle additional Java types for id attributes marked as GenerationType#AUTO. Built-in support for Number and UUID. Expandable via new org.hibernate.boot.model.IdGeneratorStrategyInterpreter extension.
- Additionally, support for AttributeConverters has been expanded and more fully realized
Check Hibernate ORM Roadmap for more details.