i have an application in which the user enters a username and password. instead of validating the user against a table i created, i want to use the oracle backend to validate him/her.

how do i dynamically tell hibernate to connect (or attempt to connect) via the data entered and not via that which is already hardcoded in the hibernate.cfg.xml file??

provide you own connection or write a connection provider that does what you want.

max,

could you give me a very simple code explanation of how to do that. i'm new to hibernate and it is still rather confusing.

Providing your own connection:
sessionfactory.openSession(yourOwnOpenedConnection);

Implement your own ConnectionProvider: Look at the diffeent implementations of ConnectionProvider and see what they are doing.

i'll give it a shot. thanks.