Java framework/toolkit for POJO, database persistence and XML

Question

Hi all,
I've been wondering if there's a toolkit or framework for developing Java program (could be standalone Java program, EJBs etc.)
I surfed around casually and found some but there isn't any detailed description of what and how each framework/toolkit does. So I hope to ask around if you've anything that you have used before and would like to point to me to look further.
Given the huge number of open source toolkits, libraries and frameworks out there, it can be quite confusing as to which one is more suitable for me. Also with Sun's move into JDO and Java Persistence API, things become more messy and complicated - there isn't any clear leader in this area and things are starting to change with the inclusion of JDO which seems to be the future standard persistence API to use.
So far, I've only worked with Hibernate for database persistence before. So I'm wondering if there're other options such as Hibernate with XDoclet, Castor and Spring framework etc. that can easily transform Plain Old Java Objects (POJO) -- hopefully using Java Reflection w/o using mapping XML files like in Hibernate -- into SQL for database persistence and XML text data and vice-versa. The current problem is that I've been spending tons of time writing code to transform data in Java objects into XML (using my own format) and also doing mapping files for Hibernate.
I am hoping for something simple like:
Object o = new Object();
o.setProperty = "something";
String xml = o.toXML(); // Convert object to XML text.
o.save(); // Save to database.
// The reverse: Parse XML into object and load from database
Object o = new Object();
o.fromXML(xml);
o.load();
// Properties should be initialized from database or XML.
Anything similar to this out there?

Answer 1

Hi,
Just to share what I've found after surfing a bit more on this issue to promote more discussion on this area.
For mapping of Java objects to XML, we can try looking more at Castor and JAXB.
For database persistence to/from Java objects, look at Hibernate and JDO.
There is this Hydrate project (hydrate.sourceforge.net) that I do not know where it fits in still. But it is supposed to do data transformation and mapping between Java objects, XML and database representation.
Fyi.