I have been using Hibernate for over a year but upon trying to do something slightly different it all goes to hell. After failing to populate a slightly different table I am resorting to insert statements but need the next sequence. That is failing too.

String sql = org.hibernate.dialect.Dialect.getDialect().getSequenceNextValString(seqName);

gives me

10:55:44,046 ERROR [Log] org.hibernate.HibernateException The dialect was not set. Set the property hibernate.dialect...
org.hibernate.dialect.Dialect.instantiateDialect(Dialect.java
org.hibernate.dialect.Dialect.getDialect(Dialect.java:210)

Now that is pretty annoying because in my config file (which has been fine for a LONG time)

<property name="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect</property>
<property name="dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect</property>

also if I do a get property just before the sequence it *does* return org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect

so it is a fake error message and so I would have to restore to a bunch of if/else if for every database I need to support.

can you tell I am having a bad day?

Perhaps you're using the wrong mechanism to get the Dialect.

Based on that method you're calling has no usages in the Hibernate code I'm not quite sure what's it's for but it is trying to find the Dialect out of your System properties which hibernate doesn't seem to set.

You will probably have better success if you get the Dialect off of your SessionFactory.