Hibernate4.1 Version Features:

Ø  API for loading by natural identifiers (@NaturalId).

Note: (Unfortunately the above feature was hibernates specific not apply to JPA).

Ø  The ability to provide custom dirty handling.

Ø  Addition of a TenantIdentifierResolver for use with multitenancy in getCurrentSession.

Hibernate4.0 Version New Features:

Ø  Provide support for initial multi-tenancy databases.

Ø  Introduces a ServiceRegistry.

Ø  Redesign SessionFactory Building.

Ø  Clean up of Session opening from SessionFactory.

Ø  Using org.hibernate.integrator.spi.Integrator made integration and auto discovery more desirable.

Ø  Improve to work (Better logging) with i18n and message codes.

Ø  Clean up of deprecated interfaces, methods, etc.

Ø  Preparation for OSGI support
Ø  Jdk1.6 (jdbc4) as baseline.

Hibernate3.6  final Version Features:

Ø  Hibernate Core.

Ø  Hibernate Envers(Easy Entity Relationship).

Ø  Hibernate Entity-managers.

Ø  Hibernate Annotations.

Ø  Hibernate-caches

ü  hibernate-c3p0

ü  hibernate-proxool

ü  hibernate-ehcache

ü  hibernate-infinispan

ü  hibernate-jbosscache

ü  hibernate-oscache

ü  hibernate-swarmcache

Ø   Dropping support for JDK 1.4

Ø  Merging of hibernate-jmx and hibernate-annotations modules into hibernate-core. For those of you using Maven, that means hibernate-core-3.6.0.Final.jar contains annotation and jmx support.

Ø  Improved Type support (HHH-5138 and related issues)

Ø  Change in DTD hosting (HHH-5485)

Ø  Slew of documentation changes, including introducing a new Getting Started Guide

Ø  Several improvements to annotations support for discriminators, column-level read/write expressions, and timestamp versions.

New Envers feature (ValidityAuditStrategy) as an alternative way to write history entries. 

Hibernation Version Features:

Ø  Hibernate Core.

Ø  Hibernate Envers(Easy Entity Relationship).

Ø  Hibernate Entity-managers.

Ø  Hibernate Annotations.

Ø  Hibernate Search engine (Apache Lucien Support).

Ø  JSR 317 (JPA2) support.

Ø  Integration of hibernate-annotations, hibernate-entitymanager and hibernate-envers into the core project. See http://in.relation.to/14172.lace for details

Ø  Added Infinispan as a standard second-level cache. See http://infinispan.blogspot.com/2009/10/infinispan-based-hibernate-cache.html for details

Ø  Improvements to the new second-level caching SPI introduced in 3.3 based on feedback from implementers including Ehcache, Inifinispan and JBoss Cache.

Ø  Far better read only / immutable support.

Ø  Support for JDBC 4 such that Hibernate can be used in JDK 1.6 JVMs and make use of JDBC4-compliant drivers.'

Ø  Support for column-level read/write fragments (HBM only for now)

Ø  Initial support for fetch profiles

Hibernate  final Versions and its release dates.:

1.      Hibernate3.0       final         released Year              31^st Mar, 2005.

2.      Hibernate3.1.3                    released Year             20^th Mar, 2006.

3.      Hibernate3.2.6    GA         released Year               09^th May, 2009.

4.      Hibernate3.3.2    GA          released Year             24^th June, 2009. 

5.      Hibernate3.4.0    GA          released Year             20^th Aug, 2008.

6.      Hibernate3.5       final         released Year              13^th Mar, 2010.

7.      Hibernate3.6       final         released Year              14^th Oct, 2010.

8.      Hibernate4.0       final        released Year             15^th Dec, 2011.

9.      Hibernate4.1       final        released Year             09^th Feb, 2012.