How do Spring Data, JPA, and Hibernate interact when working with a database?

Spring Data is a high-level library that simplifies working with databases by providing convenient repositories and abstractions for data access. It uses JPA (Java Persistence API) as a standard interface for working with object-relational mapping (ORM).

JPA is a specification that describes how Java applications should interact with a database through objects. It defines a set of annotations and interfaces for managing persistence.

Hibernate is one of the most popular implementations of JPA. It is responsible for the specific ORM implementation, translating object operations into SQL queries and managing sessions and transactions.

In summary, Spring Data uses JPA as an API, and Hibernate as the JPA implementation for database interaction.

Example:

@Repository
public interface UserRepository extends JpaRepository<User, Long> {
    List<User> findByLastName(String lastName);
}

Here, Spring Data creates an implementation of the repository, using JPA (Hibernate underneath) to perform database queries.