JPA entities are Java classes whose fields are persisted to a database by the JPA API. These Java classes are Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs), and as such, they don't need to extend any specific parent class or implement any specific interface. A Java class is designated as a JPA entity by decorating it with the @Entity annotation.
In order to create and test our first JPA entity, we will create a new web application using the JavaServer Faces framework. In this example, we will name our application jpaweb, and (as with all of our examples) we will use the bundled GlassFish application server.
Tip
Refer to Chapter 2, Developing Web Applications Using JavaServer Faces 2.2, for instructions on creating a new JSF project.
To create a new JPA entity, select the Persistence category from the new file dialog and select Entity Class as the file type.
After doing so, NetBeans presents the New Entity Class wizard.
At this point, we should specify the values for the Class Name...