Hibernate version: 2.1

Is there a way to force hibernate to use a UserType in place of a built in type by default? Basically, I have a user type for String objects which deals with Oracle issues related to not supporting empty strings. The user type basically plugs in a char(0) when an empty string is passed, and reads in an empty string when char(0) comes back from the database.

I'd like to have hibernate automatically use this for all String properties.

Is there a way to accomplish this, or do I have to put it in the mapping for every type?
Any solution where I can accomplish this in one place would be fine.

Thanks in advance for the help.

You'd have to write a customization of the net.sf.hibernate.type.TypeFactory class. Specifically, check out the static "BASIC_TYPES" Map.

But I would have to alter the hibernate.jar from what i can tell to plug in a new TypeFactory.

That being said, i'm willing to make changes to TypeFactory to allow a user to specify default types for certain java classes.