Creating database applications using JPA

In the previous section, we learned how to create the Course Management application using JDBC and JSTL. In this section, we will build the same application using JPA and JSF. We have learned how to create a web application using JSF in Chapter 2, Creating a Simple JEE Web Application. We will use much of that knowledge in this section.

As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, JPA is an ORM framework, which is now part of the JEE specification. At the time of writing, it is in version 2.2. We will learn a lot about JPA as we develop our application.

Create the Maven project called CourseManagementJPA with group ID packt.book.jee_eclipse and artifact ID CourseManagementJPA. Eclipse JEE has great tools for creating applications using JPA, but you need to convert your project to a JPA project. We will see how to do this later in this section.

Creating user interfaces for adding courses using JSF

Before we write any data access code using JPA, let's...