Hibernate-Core is a Tapestry module that provides basic Hibernate support without dependencies on the Tapestry-core (the web framework part of Tapestry).
This module only requires the Tapestry IoC module. This makes it useful in non-web applications, such as back-end processing.
The Tapestry-hibernate module extends this further, adding features to support the creation of CRUD (Create/Read/Update/Delete) database applications in Tapestry.
Licensing Issues
Hibernate is licensed under the Lesser GNU Public License. This is more restrictive license than the Apache Software License used by the rest of Tapestry. The restrictions mostly apply to redistributing Hibernate, especially in any altered form, and will likely be irrelevant to the vast majority of users, but you should be aware.
See Supported Environments and Versions for the Hibernate versions that are supported.