Using JPA implementations in desktop applications?

I'm generally a web developer so I'm used to ORM-style abstraction, but find myself working on a desktop app at the moment.

I've read a few warnings about using Hibernate in desktop applications because of slow startup time, and blog posts about JPA implementations not being ready for the desktop.

I'm hoping that standard practice for modern J2SE desktop apps isn't just to store the objects in ArrayLists, and that there is some sort of persistenc开发者_运维问答e layer that can help out....

The blog you are referring to talks about the sizes, not startup times.

If you are writing a real desktop application, you shouldn't worry about the size or bootstrap time implications of adding another API. Just look at the size of the installs and start times of Eclipse (Java) or Microsoft Word (native).

Although I can see how the startup time penalty might be an issue for a small command line utility.