JPA and Hibernate Difference

JPA is a specification for accessing, persisting and managing the data between Java objects and the relational database. As the definition says its API, it is only the specification. There is no implementation for the API. JPA specifies the set of rules and guidelines for developing the interfaces
JPA is just guidelines to implement the Object Relational Mapping (ORM)  and there is no underlying code for the implementation.


 Hibernate is the actual implementation of JPA guidelines. When hibernate implements the JPA specification.
Hibernate is a JPA provider. When there is new changes to the specification, hibernate would release its updated implementation for the JPA specification. Other popular JPA providers are Eclipse Link (Reference Implementation), OpenJPA, etc

JPA is not an implementation, it will not provide any concrete functionality to your application.  Its purpose is to provide a set of rules and guidelines that can be followed by JPA implementation vendors to create an ORM implementation in a standardized manner. 

Hibernate JPA Annotations - Contents:

Annotation	Package Detail/Import statement
@Entity	import javax.persistence.Entity;
@Table	import javax.persistence.Table;
@Column	import javax.persistence.Column;
@Id	import javax.persistence.Id;
@GeneratedValue	import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
@Version	import javax.persistence.Version;
@OrderBy	import javax.persistence.OrderBy;
@Transient	import javax.persistence.Transient;
@Lob	import javax.persistence.Lob;
Hibernate Association Mapping Annotations
@OneToOne	import javax.persistence.OneToOne;
@ManyToOne	import javax.persistence.ManyToOne;
@OneToMany	import javax.persistence.OneToMany;
@ManyToMany	import javax.persistence.ManyToMany;
@PrimaryKeyJoinColumn	import javax.persistence.PrimaryKeyJoinColumn;
@JoinColumn	import javax.persistence.JoinColumn;
@JoinTable	import javax.persistence.JoinTable;
@MapsId	import javax.persistence.MapsId;
Hibernate Inheritance Mapping Annotations
@Inheritance	import javax.persistence.Inheritance;
@DiscriminatorColumn	import javax.persistence.DiscriminatorColumn;
@DiscriminatorValue	import javax.persistence.DiscriminatorValue;