A relational database is still an industry standard for data persistence, while Hibernate is Java-framework #1 for building a persistence layer of our apps. Its features like Persistence Context, Dirty Checking, Lazy Loading, Action Queue, and Flush bring so much power... And so much complexity. There is literally no way to make Hibernate a simple lightweight framework. No worries, if you don't want to deal with complexity. There is always a choice. Spring Data JDBC is a super-simple framework that perfectly fits into your Spring application and brings you almost no magic. It's simple, predictable, and straightforward. And it's your new option for building a persistence layer.