Because Hibernate is designed to operate in many different environments, there are a large number of configuration parameters. Fortunately, most have sensible default values and Hibernate is distributed with an example hibernate.properties file that shows the various options. You usually only have to put that file in your classpath and customize it. An instance of net.sf.hibernate.cfg.Configuration represents an entire set of mappings of an application's Java types to a SQL database. The Configuration is used to build a (immutable)` SessionFactory. The mappings are compiled from various XML mapping files. You may obtain a Configuration instance by instantiating it directly. Heres an example of setting up a datastore from mappings defined in two XML configuration files (in the classpath): An alternative (sometimes better) way is to let Hibernate load a mapping file using getResourceAsStream(): Then Hibernate will look for mapping files named /org/hibernate/autcion/Item.hbm.xml and /org/hibernate/autcion/Bid.hbm.xml in the classpath. This approach eliminates any hardcoded filenames. A Configuration also specifies various optional properties: A Configuration is intended as a configuration-time object, to be discarded once a SessionFactory is built. When all mappings have been parsed by the Configuration, the application must obtain a factory for Session instances. This factory is intended to be shared by all application threads: However, Hibernate does allow your application to instantiate more than one SessionFactory. This is useful if you are using more than one database. A SessionFactory may open a Session on a user-provided JDBC connection. This design choice frees the application to obtain JDBC connections wherever it pleases: The application must be careful not to open two concurrent Sessions on the same JDBC connection! Alternatively, you can have the SessionFactory open connections for you. The SessionFactory must be provided with JDBC connection properties in one of the following ways: Pass an instance of java.util.Properties to Configuration.setProperties(). Place hibernate.properties in a root directory of the classpath. Set System properties using java -Dproperty=value. Include <property> elements in hibernate.cfg.xml (discussed later). If you take this approach, opening a Session is as simple as: All Hibernate property names and semantics are defined on the class net.sf.hibernate.cfg.Environment. We will now describe the most important settings for JDBC connection configuration. Hibernate will obtain (and pool) connections using java.sql.DriverManager if you set the following properties: Property name Purpose hibernate.connection.driver_class jdbc driver class hibernate.connection.url jdbc URL hibernate.connection.username database user hibernate.connection.password database user password hibernate.connection.pool_size maximum number of pooled connections Hibernate's own connection pooling algorithm is quite rudimentary. It is intended to help you get started and is not intended for use in a production system or even for performance testing. Use a third party pool for best performance and stability, i.e., replace the hibernate.connection.pool_size property with connection pool specific settings. C3P0 is an open source JDBC connection pool distributed along with Hibernate in the lib directory. Hibernate will use the built-in C3P0ConnectionProvider for connection pooling if you set the hibernate.c3p0.* properties. There is also built-in support for Apache DBCP and for Proxool. You must set the properties hibernate.dbcp.* (DBCP connection pool properties) to enable the DBCPConnectionProvider. Prepared statement caching is enabled (highly recommend) if hibernate.dbcp.ps.* (DBCP statement cache properties) are set. Please refer the the Apache commons-pool documentation for the interpretation of these properties. You should set the hibernate.proxool.* properties if you wish to use Proxool. This is an example using C3P0: For use inside an application server, Hibernate may obtain connections from a javax.sql.Datasource registered in JNDI. Set the following properties: Propery name Purpose hibernate.connection.datasource datasource JNDI name hibernate.jndi.url URL of the JNDI provider (optional) hibernate.jndi.class class of the JNDI InitialContextFactory (optional) hibernate.connection.username database user (optional) hibernate.connection.password database user password (optional) This is an example using an application server provided JNDI datasource: JDBC connections obtained from a JNDI datasource will automatically participate in the container-managed transactions of the application server. Arbitrary connection properties may be given by prepending "hibernate.connnection" to the property name. For example, you may specify a charSet using hibernate.connnection.charSet. You may define your own plugin strategy for obtaining JDBC connections by implementing the interface net.sf.hibernate.connection.ConnectionProvider. You may select a custom implementation by setting hibernate.connection.provider_class. There are a number of other properties that control the behaviour of Hibernate at runtime. All are optional and have reasonable default values. System-level properties can only be set via java -Dproperty=value or be defined in hibernate.properties and not with an instance of Properties passed to the Configuration. Property name Purpose hibernate.dialect The classname of a Hibernate Dialect - enables certain platform dependent features. eg. full.classname.of.Dialect hibernate.default_schema Qualify unqualified tablenames with the given schema/tablespace in generated SQL. eg. SCHEMA_NAME hibernate.session_factory_name The SessionFactory will be automatically bound to this name in JNDI after it has been created. eg. jndi/composite/name hibernate.use_outer_join Enables outer join fetching. Deprecated, use max_fetch_depth. eg. true | false hibernate.max_fetch_depth Set a maximum "depth" for the outer join fetch tree for single-ended associations (one-to-one, many-to-one). A 0 disables default outer join fetching. eg. recommended values between 0 and 3 hibernate.jdbc.fetch_size A non-zero value determines the JDBC fetch size (calls Statement.setFetchSize()). hibernate.jdbc.batch_size A non-zero value enables use of JDBC2 batch updates by Hibernate. eg. recommended values between 5 and 30 hibernate.jdbc.use_scrollable_resultset Enables use of JDBC2 scrollable resultsets by Hibernate. This property is only necessary when using user supplied JDBC connections, Hibernate uses connection metadata otherwise. eg. true | false hibernate.jdbc.use_streams_for_binary Use streams when writing/reading binary or serializable types to/from JDBC (system-level property). eg. true | false hibernate.jdbc.use_get_generated_keys Enable use of JDBC3 PreparedStatement.getGeneratedKeys() to retrieve natively generated keys after insert. Requires JDBC3+ driver and JRE1.4+, set to false if your driver has problems with the Hibernate identifier generators. By default, tries to determine the driver capabilites using connection metadata. eg. true|false hibernate.cglib.use_reflection_optimizer Enables use of CGLIB instead of runtime reflection (System-level property, default is to use CGLIB where possible). Reflection can sometimes be useful when troubleshooting. eg. true | false hibernate.jndi.<propertyName> Pass the property propertyName to the JNDI InitialContextFactory. hibernate.connection.isolation Set the JDBC transaction isolation level. Check java.sql.Connection for meaningful values but note that most databases do not support all isolation levels. eg. 1, 2, 4, 8 hibernate.connection.<propertyName> Pass the JDBC property propertyName to DriverManager.getConnection(). hibernate.connection.provider_class The classname of a custom ConnectionProvider. eg. classname.of.ConnectionProvider hibernate.cache.provider_class The classname of a custom CacheProvider. eg. classname.of.CacheProvider hibernate.cache.use_minimal_puts Optimize second-level cache operation to minimize writes, at the cost of more frequent reads (useful for clustered caches). eg. true|false hibernate.cache.use_query_cache Enable the query cache, individual queries still have to be set cachable. eg. true|false hibernate.cache.region_prefix A prefix to use for second-level cache region names. eg. prefix hibernate.transaction.factory_class The classname of a TransactionFactory to use with Hibernate Transaction API (defaults to JDBCTransactionFactory). eg. classname.of.TransactionFactory jta.UserTransaction A JNDI name used by JTATransactionFactory to obtain the JTA UserTransaction from the application server. eg. jndi/composite/name hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class The classname of a TransactionManagerLookup - required when JVM-level caching is enabled in a JTA environment. eg. classname.of.TransactionManagerLookup hibernate.query.substitutions Mapping from tokens in Hibernate queries to SQL tokens (tokens might be function or literal names, for example). eg. hqlLiteral=SQL_LITERAL, hqlFunction=SQLFUNC hibernate.show_sql Write all SQL statements to console. eg. true | false hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto Automatically export schema DDL to the database when the SessionFactory is created. With create-drop, the database schema will be dropped when the SessionFactory is closed explicitely. eg. update | create | create-drop You should always set the hibernate.dialect property to the correct net.sf.hibernate.dialect.Dialect subclass for your database. This is not strictly essential unless you wish to use native or sequence primary key generation or pessimistic locking (with, eg. Session.lock() or Query.setLockMode()). However, if you specify a dialect, Hibernate will use sensible defaults for some of the other properties listed above, saving you the effort of specifying them manually. RDBMS Dialect DB2 net.sf.hibernate.dialect.DB2Dialect MySQL net.sf.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect SAP DB net.sf.hibernate.dialect.SAPDBDialect Oracle (any version) net.sf.hibernate.dialect.OracleDialect Oracle 9 net.sf.hibernate.dialect.Oracle9Dialect Sybase net.sf.hibernate.dialect.SybaseDialect Sybase Anywhere net.sf.hibernate.dialect.SybaseAnywhereDialect Progress net.sf.hibernate.dialect.ProgressDialect Mckoi SQL net.sf.hibernate.dialect.MckoiDialect Interbase net.sf.hibernate.dialect.InterbaseDialect Pointbase net.sf.hibernate.dialect.PointbaseDialect PostgreSQL net.sf.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect HypersonicSQL net.sf.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect Microsoft SQL Server net.sf.hibernate.dialect.SQLServerDialect Ingres net.sf.hibernate.dialect.IngresDialect Informix net.sf.hibernate.dialect.InformixDialect FrontBase net.sf.hibernate.dialect.FrontbaseDialect If your database supports ANSI or Oracle style outer joins, outer join fetching might increase performance by limiting the number of round trips to and from the database (at the cost of possibly more work performed by the database itself). Outer join fetching allows a graph of objects connected by many-to-one, one-to-many or one-to-one associations to be retrieved in a single SQL SELECT. By default, the fetched graph when loading an objects ends at leaf objects, collections, objects with proxies, or where circularities occur. For a particular association, fetching may be enabled or disabled (and the default behaviour overridden) by setting the outer-join attribute in the XML mapping. Outer join fetching may be disabled globally by setting the property hibernate.max_fetch_depth to 0. A setting of 1 or higher enables outer join fetching for all one-to-one and many-to-one associations, which are, also by default, set to auto outer join. However, one-to-many associations and collections are never fetched with an outer-join, unless explicitely declared for each particular association. This behavior can also be overriden at runtime with Hibernate queries. Oracle limits the size of byte arrays that may be passed to/from its JDBC driver. If you wish to use large instances of binary or serializable type, you should enable hibernate.jdbc.use_streams_for_binary. This is a JVM-level setting only. You may integrate a JVM-level (or clustered) second-level cache system by implementing the interface net.sf.hibernate.cache.CacheProvider. You may select the custom implementation by setting hibernate.cache.provider_class. If you wish to use the Hibernate Transaction API, you must specify a factory class for Transaction instances by setting the property hibernate.transaction.factory_class. The Transaction API hides the underlying transaction mechanism and allows Hibernate code to run in managed and non-managed environments. There are two standard (built-in) choices: net.sf.hibernate.transaction.JDBCTransactionFactory delegates to database (JDBC) transactions (default) net.sf.hibernate.transaction.JTATransactionFactory delegates to JTA (if an existing transaction is underway, the Session performs its work in that context, otherwise a new transaction is started) You may also define your own transaction strategies (for a CORBA transaction service, for example). If you wish to use JVM-level caching of mutable data in a JTA environment, you must specify a strategy for obtaining the JTA TransactionManager, as this is not standardized for J2EE containers: Transaction Factory Application Server org.hibernate.transaction.JBossTransactionManagerLookup JBoss org.hibernate.transaction.WeblogicTransactionManagerLookup Weblogic org.hibernate.transaction.WebSphereTransactionManagerLookup WebSphere org.hibernate.transaction.OrionTransactionManagerLookup Orion org.hibernate.transaction.ResinTransactionManagerLookup Resin org.hibernate.transaction.JOTMTransactionManagerLookup JOTM org.hibernate.transaction.JOnASTransactionManagerLookup JOnAS org.hibernate.transaction.JRun4TransactionManagerLookup JRun4 org.hibernate.transaction.BESTransactionManagerLookup Borland ES A JNDI bound Hibernate SessionFactory can simplify the lookup of the factory and the creation of new Sessions. If you wish to have the SessionFactory bound to a JNDI namespace, specify a name (eg. java:comp/env/hibernate/SessionFactory) using the property hibernate.session_factory_name. If this property is omitted, the SessionFactory will not be bound to JNDI. (This is especially useful in environments with a read-only JNDI default implementation, eg. Tomcat.) When binding the SessionFactory to JNDI, Hibernate will use the values of hibernate.jndi.url, hibernate.jndi.class to instantiate an initial context. If they are not specified, the default InitialContext will be used. If you do choose to use JNDI, an EJB or other utility class may obtain the SessionFactory using a JNDI lookup. You may define new Hibernate query tokens using hibernate.query.substitutions. For example: hibernate.query.substitutions true=1, false=0 would cause the tokens true and false to be translated to integer literals in the generated SQL. hibernate.query.substitutions toLowercase=LOWER would allow you to rename the SQL LOWER function. Hibernate logs various events using Apache commons-logging. The commons-logging service will direct output to either Apache Log4j (if you include log4j.jar in your classpath) or JDK1.4 logging (if running under JDK1.4 or above). You may download Log4j from http://jakarta.apache.org. To use Log4j you will need to place a log4j.properties file in your classpath, an example properties file is distributed with Hibernate in the src/ directory. We strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with Hibernate's log messages. A lot of work has been put into making the Hibernate log as detailed as possible, without making it unreadable. It is an essential troubleshooting device. Also don't forget to enable SQL logging as described above (hibernate.show_sql), it is your first step when looking for performance problems. The interface net.sf.hibernate.cfg.NamingStrategy allows you to specify a "naming standard" for database objects and schema elements. You may provide rules for automatically generating database identifiers from Java identifiers or for processing "logical" column and table names given in the mapping file into "physical" table and column names. This feature helps reduce the verbosity of the mapping document, eliminating repetitive noise (TBL_ prefixes, for example). The default strategy used by Hibernate is quite minimal. You may specify a different strategy by calling Configuration.setNamingStrategy() before adding mappings: net.sf.hibernate.cfg.ImprovedNamingStrategy is a built-in strategy that might be a useful starting point for some applications. An alternative approach is to specify a full configuration in a file named hibernate.cfg.xml. This file can be used as a replacement for the hibernate.properties file or, if both are present, override properties. The XML configuration file is by default expected to be in the root o your CLASSPATH. Here is an example: my/first/datasource net.sf.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect false true net.sf.hibernate.transaction.JTATransactionFactory java:comp/UserTransaction ]]> Configuring Hibernate is then as simple as You can pick a different XML configuration file using