Several years I develop at work in C#, MVC, Entity Framework, database first. Now I want to try Java and choose Play Framework and IDEA as IDE. Now I search such ORM system as:
- easy integrating in Play Framework;
- have class generation from database (reverse engineering) as main tool;
- have easy language like LINQ in C# (ex: from x in context.MY_TABLE select x)
I'm not aware if IDEA supports DB -> JPA entities reverse-engineering, but Eclipse Dali does this fine - I have used this approach on several projects and were happy with it.
http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/dali/
Play2 works ok with full JPA if wished. Ebean uses only JPA annotations. I like EBean since even if I'm not completely convinced about JPA's criteria API (I have went it thru on JPA 2.0, so don't know how much easier it has come on JPA 2.1) & usefulness of EntityMananager (all hassle with connected / disconnedted entities) I'm big fan of JPA annotations.
For anyone interested in JPA I recommend this book
http://www.amazon.com/Pro-JPA-2-Mike-Keith/dp/1430249269/
BTW: JPA's named queries / JPQL might be ok for sql like simple query needs. Ebean doesn't support JPQL, so if one wants to use it then full JPA implementation like Hibernate or EclipseLink is needed.