In this chapter, we learned how NetBeans can make developing with persistence and JPA, in particular, a lot easier. We saw how we can create blank entity classes and entity classes from existing database schemas. We also looked at this from the opposite angle and saw how to create database schemas from the entity classes within our projects. We'll look at persistence again later in the book when we will learn to use it with session beans and web services.

In the next chapter, we'll take a look at desktop development and see the different tools that NetBeans provides to enable us to build desktop applications efficiently.