I'm trying to apply Hibernate in the context of a data migration between two systems which have essentially identical schemae. I have a basic understanding of how Hibernate works as commonly used, but am seeking a conceptual overview of how I would approach the task of migrating data using Hibernate.

Is it simply a matter of creating two SessionFactories, each with its own set of mapping files, sharing a common set of POJO's or, if not, what general approach would be recommended? Finally, is Hibernate simply the wrong tool for the job? Any helpful advice is appreciated

Thanks,

Eric Adamson
Lansing, Michigan

As much as I love Hibernate I would not consider H to be the best tool for the job.
I would rather recommend using iBatis for that.
Or if you already have one H mapping to the old schema then you might better off creating iBatis mappings for the new schema and persisting Hibernate fetched objects from old schema to new DB schema via iBatis session. H-2-iBatis approach worked very well for me about a year ago.

Or maybe specialized tool like Octopus http://octopus.objectweb.org/ would do the trick (did not try personally, but it looks promising).