Why do I need to configure the SQL dialect of a data source

Question

The hibernate.dialect property should be added when configuring a data source with Hibernate (or eclipselink.target-database if you are using EclipseLink). I'm curious to know what dialect means. I set up this property in accordance with Hibernate's documentation, but I'm not sure what it means.

Can someone please help me with this?

Answer 1

Dialect is defined as "a language's variety." As is well known, Hibernate is database-independent. It is compatible with a variety of databases. However, databases have their own native SQL variations, proprietary extensions, and subsets of the mainstream SQL implementations. Hibernate must therefore occasionally employ SQL that is particular to the database. To determine which database you are using, Hibernate uses a "dialect" configuration, which enables it to switch whenever/wherever necessary to the SQL generation code particular to that database.