Hibernate version: 3

Hello,

I am trying to develop an application that is useable for multiple clients. However, each client has its own unique tables, and I want to restrict the upper layers of code from making any calls to other client's objects.

Is there a way, at runtime, to specify certain objects as restricted access or "hands-off" to the rest of the code?

I appreciate your help very much!
Thanks!!!

In think filters would be the way to go :
http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/v3/reference/en/html/filters.html

Using this you will no prevent queries to be made on other tables but you can simulate empty tables. However this will not prevent inserts, updates.

Alternatively you can use several programmaticaly build a Configuration object and just add the entities you need :
http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/v3/reference/en/html/session-configuration.html#configuration-programmatic

In fact I think Filters are a bad idea for your problem, I would go the Configuration route.

But this still causes me to have to maintain a separate version of the config.hbm.xml file for each client. I am generating (hbm2java) java code at build time, so removing the actual objects out of the configuration would break code that is using those objects, right?

This doesn't seem to be a correct solution....

If you need all entities to be in your config.hbm.xml for hbm2java, then keep using this config.hbm.xml for build time.
Create a second config.hbm.xml for runtime without entities, and in your application add the classes (or .hbm.xml files) you will need to the Configuration.

We still have the same problem of maintaining two or more separate config files. I agree these are solutions that work, but I am looking for a more maintainable solution. Something that maybe Hibernate doesn't do at the moment, I don't know.

From a code standpoint, I should be able to specify what objects cannot be accessed in any given JVM. Maybe something related to security? I don't know at this moment.

Maybe I'm not clear as I'm not a native english speaker :
With this solution you'll get only TWO configurations files to maintain, which is bearable : one with all entities for hbm2java, and one without any entities for runtime.

How do you reference a configuration file from another configuration file? I have decided to keep all the common tables between clients in the main hibernate.cfg.xml file and have the main file point to a "client.cfg.xml" file (containing all client-specific mapping resources) which will be set at build time by ANT.