The Hibernate architecture is layered to keep you isolated from having to know the underlying APIs. Hibernate makes use of the database and configuration data to provide persistence services (and persistent objects) to the application.
Following is a very high level view of the Hibernate Application Architecture.

Following is a detailed view of the Hibernate Application Architecture with few important core classes.

Hibernate uses various existing Java APIs, like JDBC, Java Transaction API(JTA), and Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI). JDBC provides a rudimentary level of abstraction of functionality common to relational databases, allowing almost any database with a JDBC driver to be supported by Hibernate. JNDI and JTA allow Hibernate to be integrated with J2EE application servers.
Following section gives brief description of each of the class objects involved in Hibernate Application Architecture.

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