Lately just started reading (& learning) EJB3. Because of a slow PC at home, I needed to be able to run code for the Java Persistence API in the standalone mode, without the overhead of a huge database or app server. So, I rustled up this guide to get up and running with Java Persistence. Basically all you need is a database and an implementation of the persistence API. We will use HSQL and Hibernate Entity Manager respectively. Hibernate Entity Manager runs on the Hibernate core, so will need that too.