What is the purpose of SqlSessionFactory and SqlSession in MyBatis?

SqlSessionFactory is one of the core interfaces in MyBatis, which is used to create a SqlSession object. It acts as a factory class responsible for creating SqlSession objects and managing the lifecycle of database connections. Typically, an application only needs one SqlSessionFactory object because creating SqlSessionFactory is a resource-consuming operation.

SqlSession is an interface that is used to interact with a database. It represents a session with the database where SQL statements can be executed, transactions can be committed, and connections can be closed. Since SqlSession objects are not thread-safe, they should be created within a method and closed at the end of the method. The lifecycle of a SqlSession object is short, typically created and used within a method.