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

Question

When we configure a data source using Hibernate, we should add the hibernate.dialect property (or eclipselink.target-database if you are using EclipseLink).

I want to know what is the meaning of dialect? I configure this property according to the documentation of Hibernate but I don't know what's the meaning of it.

Answer 1

Dialect means "the variant of a language". Hibernate, as we know, is database agnostic. It can work with different databases. However, databases have proprietary extensions/native SQL variations, and set/sub-set of SQL standard implementations. Therefore at some point hibernate has to use database specific SQL. Hibernate uses "dialect" configuration to know which database you are using so that it can switch to the database specific SQL generator code wherever/whenever necessary.