This is a complex topic that might make a good Community Wiki. I’ve only scratched the surface, but NetBeans has an evolving capability in this area. It should be on your short list. See these help topics & links:
- Generating JPA Controller Classes from Entity Classes
- Binding Data to a Swing Component
- Java Persistence Tasks: Quick Reference.
- Best Practices with JPA and Beans Binding.
- Using Java Persistence API for Java SE 7 Desktop applications in NetBeans 7.