It is good to know both. I wouldn't choose which one is more important (ORM vs pure DB) as both are useful. But you can use DB without ORM, you can't use ORM w

It is good to know both. I wouldn't choose which one is more important (ORM vs pure DB) as both are useful. But you can use DB without ORM, you can't use ORM without a DB. Hibernate (and generally JPA) is usually more PITA than help, it makes easy things easier and hard things harder.