Java, DB mapping and XML: a new comer

This is an old problem.
A new player is coming in: iBatis (OSS, of course!). It is really a light framework for accessing a DB allowing you to have total control over the SQL statements your gonna use.
An interesting article on OnJava is presenting the component.
It should be kept in mind that such a framework has its own limitation (one of the most important being not to be used in complex O/R mapping cases).
Obviously, such a solution should be compared to other existing ones (Hibernate, ...)