Whenever I develop a J2EE-Application, I at some point decide to switch from my dummy Persistence (Simply Using Lists and other Data Structures) to some Sort of Database Persistence. Mostly when I hope the Data Model is more or less complete.

From this point on, changes to the data model become exhausting, but unluckily they occur rather often.

I've used different Object-Relational-Mappers (iBatis, Hibernate) for my projects. They definitely reduce the pain coming with Data Model changes, but they anyway let me adjust code/configuration at 3 or 4 places for every single change. To me, that's cumbersome and error prone.

I made a better experience with DB4O, which simply persists Java Objects as they are, but I believe it's performance does not scale for huge applications.

Is there anyway to maintain performance while letting out all the ugly configuration work?

I'm seeking a performant framework which really hides persistence from my code. Wish for thinking? Or am I missing out THE technology?

Hope you can help.