I have a very complex data processing tool that manages on the order of 90 tables, in addition to its own internal helper tables for processing the data on demand.

Each of these 90ish tables contains anywhere from 50 to 100 columns.

We manage the schema of these tables via a proprietary system that describes each column, and defines which columns go to which tables. None of this is really relevant, other than to explain why we have opted to ignore the accepted wisdom of not allowing hibernate to auto-generate tables.

That said - I have a system set up which automatically creates the hibernate hbm.xml files for these 90ish tables, and it works great. Perfectly, in fact. The only problem I have is that I have to restart my web container to have it take effect and to re-generate the tables after I've uploaded a new schema file (my program will drop affected tables when I update the schema).

So finally to my question - Is there a way to trigger hibernate to re-initialize itself from scratch WITHOUT restarting the VM it's running in?