What is the difference between Hibernate save and SQL insert?

Question

Normally I stored my objects in the DB by inserting or updating them via sql / hql statements.

query = session.createQuery("INSERT INTO Employee(firstName, lastName, salary)");
query.executeUpdate();

Recently I read about Hibernates session.save() method which takes a class and seems to automatically do the magic for inserting the class with it's attributes into the DB.

So I was wondering, what does "save" do?

Does it just generate an SQL statement for the user?

Or are there any advantages or disadvantages compared to the normal hqlQuery way?

Have a look at [Inserting data in one table using HQL in Hibernate](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12745041/inserting-data-in-one-table-using-hql-in-hibernate) — OO7, Nov 10 '14 at 12:39

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:27

save:

Save method stores an object into the database. It will Persist the given transient instance, first assigning a generated identifier. It returns the id of the entity created.

As docs says,

Persist the given transient instance, first assigning a generated identifier. (Or using the current value of the identifier property if the assigned generator is used.) This operation cascades to associated instances if the association is mapped with cascade="save-update".

Also have a look at What are the differences between the different saving methods in Hibernate?

What is the difference between Hibernate save and SQL insert?

1 Answers1