I have a couple entity beans whos .class compiled files will be reused in multiple business domain contexts. Therefore, it would not be appropriate to embedd the queries or one-to-many etc dependancies in the actual java source. I found some good docs on using external XML files to configure this however, the info on the DTD tells what the entity is without really describing it well. There are also no docs on how to load the xml for ejb3 bmp/cmp without introducing hibernate dependancies.

The goal is to be able to do this in ejb3 standalone and jboss4 and glassfish.

ref link:
http://docs.jboss.org/ejb3/app-server/H ... index.html
http://java.sun.com/javaee/5/docs/tutorial/doc/
http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityproce ... index.html

best ref i could find.. and its not complete:
http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/annot ... iding.html

I'm not sure what you are wanting to do here. I never use annotations for Hibernate (or anything for that matter) as they are a very bad idea and will tie you to a particular data schema. I use the XML file in the class path. Are you asking to be able to use an XML file that is not in the class path?

yes. an xml file from "anywhere" perhaps specified with a URL.

going beyound this, just trying to find the specs and a demo that uses ONLY XML and no annotations.