The more I read about Hibernate the more I realise that Durham is just a object-file persistence layer. Object persistence has been done over and over. Why do it again?

That's a darn good question -- maybe I shouldn't be. What if Hibernate could be extended to do file persistence instead of database persistence? That might save me a lot of work. What if there are already file persistence libraries out there that could do the job?

Clearly I should investigate more but that doesn't mean the Durham specification is a waste. It will provide a basis for requirements I need to look for in a third party library and give me an idea of the amount of work to get that library the way that I want it.

Same goes for the AudioMan2 functional spec because it depends on Durham and has requirements of its own.