Have you had experience working with databases without ORM tools like Hibernate?

Yes, I have experience working with databases without ORM. In such cases, interaction occurs directly through JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) or similar low-level APIs.

This means that the developer writes SQL queries manually, manages connections, processes results, and converts data from ResultSet into objects by hand.

Example of a simple query without ORM:

Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(dbUrl, user, password);
PreparedStatement stmt = conn.prepareStatement("SELECT id, name FROM users WHERE id = ?");
stmt.setInt(1, 10);
ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery();
if (rs.next()) {
    int id = rs.getInt("id");
    String name = rs.getString("name");
    // Manually create object
    User user = new User(id, name);
}
rs.close();
stmt.close();
conn.close();

This approach gives full control over SQL and performance but requires more code and attention to resource management.