No, it's essentially a way to automatically map between manually written SQL and custom object types; you can use MyBatis with annotations only; no XML required.
The advantage is that, as you're writing and embedding actual SQL, you can take advantage of any database-vendor-specific extensions to SQL, plus you can easily run, debug and test such SQL from another tool. Having full control over the actual SQL also means you don't risk potentially horribly inefficiently generated SQL, or risk running into unexpected N+1 scenarios. At the same time, you don't have to deal with JDBC and instead get a DAO layer that uses strongly typed objects.
Of course the disadvantage is that you lose portability; moving for instance a MyBatis/SqlServer app to Oracle will mean verifying, testing and potentially rewriting every single SQL statement in your app. If you're willing to accept that risk though, MyBatis is a great lightweight library to manage your database access layer.
The advantage is that, as you're writing and embedding actual SQL, you can take advantage of any database-vendor-specific extensions to SQL, plus you can easily run, debug and test such SQL from another tool. Having full control over the actual SQL also means you don't risk potentially horribly inefficiently generated SQL, or risk running into unexpected N+1 scenarios. At the same time, you don't have to deal with JDBC and instead get a DAO layer that uses strongly typed objects.
Of course the disadvantage is that you lose portability; moving for instance a MyBatis/SqlServer app to Oracle will mean verifying, testing and potentially rewriting every single SQL statement in your app. If you're willing to accept that risk though, MyBatis is a great lightweight library to manage your database access layer.