Jakarta Persistence API (JPA) Extensions Reference for EclipseLink, Release 3.0
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1 Introduction

This chapter introduces EclipseLink. EclipseLink is an advanced, object-persistence and object-transformation framework that provides development tools and run-time capabilities that reduce development and maintenance efforts, and increase enterprise application functionality.

This chapter includes the following sections:

About EclipseLink

EclipseLink is suitable for use with a wide range of Java Enterprise Edition (Jakarta EE) and Java application architectures. Use EclipseLink to design, implement, deploy, and optimize an advanced object-persistence and object-transformation layer that supports a variety of data sources and formats, including the following:

The EclipseLink native API includes:

EclipseLink includes support for EJB 3.0 and the Jakarta Persistence API (JPA) in Jakarta EE and Java SE environments including integration with a variety of application servers including:

EclipseLink lets you quickly capture and define object-to-data source and object-to-data representation mappings in a flexible, efficient metadata format.

The EclipseLink runtime lets your application exploit this mapping metadata with a simple session facade that provides in-depth support for standard APIs such as JPA, and JAXB as well as EclipseLink-specific extensions to those standards.

About This Documentation

EclipseLink is the reference implementation of the Java Persistence Architecture (JPA) 2.0 specification It also includes many enhancements and extensions.

This document explains the EclipseLink enhancements and extensions to JPA. Please refer to the JPA specification for full documentation of core JPA. Where appropriate, this documentation provides links to the pertinent section of the specification.

Other Resources

For more information, see: