Use native Hibernate 4 API

In Spring 3.1, a new package named org.springframework.orm.hibernate4 is included( in spring-orm maven dependency). With this new APIs, using Hibernate 4 in Spring projects becomes more easy than before, you are not required to extend the HiberanteDaoSupport class or use HibernateTemplate in your implemnetation class.
Only a simple registration is required in Spring configuration, you can use the Hibernate native Session API freely in your Spring projects.

1. Register a DataSource bean
   

   <jdbc:embedded-database id="dataSource" >
   </jdbc:embedded-database>
   

2. Declare Spring specific LocalSessionFactoryBean bean.
   

   <bean id="sessionFactory"
       class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
       <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
       <property name="packagesToScan">
           <list>
               <value>com.hantsylabs.example.spring.model</value>
           </list>
       </property>
       <property name="hibernateProperties">
           <value>
               hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect
               hibernate.format_sql=true
               hibernate.show_sql=true
               hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto=create
           </value>
       </property>
   </bean>
   

   The legacy Spring Hibernate3 integration provides two version of SessionFactoryBean, ~.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean targets the legacy Hibernate XML mapping configuration, ~.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean is use for annotation based configuration.
   
3. Register a transaction manager.
   

   <bean id="transactionManager"
   class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.HibernateTransactionManager">
   <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory" />
   </bean>
   

4. Now you can inject SessionFactory in your implementation class freely.
   

   @Repository
   public class Hibernate4ConferenceDaoImpl implements ConferenceDao {
   private static final Logger log = LoggerFactory
           .getLogger(Hibernate4ConferenceDaoImpl.class);
   
   @Autowired
   SessionFactory sessionFactory;
   
   private Session session() {
       return sessionFactory.getCurrentSession();
   }
   
   @Override
   public Conference findById(Long id) {
       return (Conference) session().load(Conference.class, id);
   
   }
   
   // other methods...
   }
   

   It is very simple and stupid. All the codes are based on Hibernate Session APIs now.
   NOTE: Hibernate 3 also can be configured like these, I do not demonstrate the steps here.
   

For the newest project, you can also use the Spring fluent java configuration API for all Spring configurations instead of the XML configuration.
The following is an example of the Java configuration, it is equivalent to the XML format above.

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages={"com.hantsylabs.example.spring.dao","com.hantsylabs.example.spring.hibernate4"})
public class HibernateConfig {

    @Bean
    public DataSource dataSource() {
        return new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder().build();
    }

    @Bean
    public SessionFactory sessionFactory() {
        LocalSessionFactoryBuilder builder = new LocalSessionFactoryBuilder(
                dataSource());
        builder.scanPackages("com.hantsylabs.example.spring.model")
                .addProperties(hibernateProperties());

        return builder.buildSessionFactory();
    }

    private Properties hibernateProperties() {
        Properties extraProperties = new Properties();
        extraProperties.put("hibernate.format_sql", "true");
        extraProperties.put("hibernate.show_sql", "true");
        extraProperties.put("hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto", "create");
        return extraProperties;
    }

    @Bean
    public PlatformTransactionManager transactionManager() {
        return new HibernateTransactionManager(sessionFactory());
    }

}

The configuration class is annotated with annotation @Configuration. In this class, a DataSource bean, a SessionFactoryBean, a TransactionManager bean are defined respectively. A EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder is provided to produce a DataSource bean, a LocalSessionFactoryBuilder is designated for building a SessionFactory bean. The Builder pattern is more friendly for setting some properties.

Check out the codes from my github.com,  https://github.com/hantsy/spring-sandbox.