Lazy loading is a feature in Hibernate that defers the loading of associated entities or collections until they are explicitly accessed or needed. When an entity is loaded from the database, its associated entities or collections may not be loaded immediately. Instead, Hibernate provides lazy loading to delay the loading of these associated objects until they are accessed by the application.
Lazy loading is particularly useful for improving performance by reducing the amount of data fetched from the database. It allows Hibernate to retrieve only the essential data initially, deferring the loading of additional related data until it is actually needed by the application.
Lazy loading is typically used with associations between entities, such as one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many relationships. When an entity with lazy-loaded associations is loaded from the database, Hibernate generates proxy objects for the associated entities or collections. These proxy objects act as placeholders and do not actually load the associated data until it is accessed by the application.
Lazy loading can be configured at the association level using annotations or XML mappings in Hibernate. By default, associations are configured for lazy loading to minimize unnecessary database queries and improve performance. However, developers can override this default behavior and configure associations for eager loading if needed.
Overall, lazy loading is a powerful feature in Hibernate that helps optimize performance by fetching data from the database only when it is required, reducing unnecessary database queries and minimizing resource consumption.
