In my hibernate.properties file, I have been using:



Of the possible (update, create and create-drop) options, this seemed like the best one to use to ensure my HSQL database was started automagically. This allows me to create a sample app where users don't have to install/start the database manually.

This has been working, but it blows away the database b/w unit test methods and when I restart Tomcat. I expected this.

Tonight, I tried changing the value to "create-update" because this is the behavior I really want: create the database if it doesn't exist, update the schema if I change any mapping files, don't delete the data.

I don't know if its a miracle or what, but it works! Is this Colorado beer getting to me, or is this a hidden Hibernate feature?

I'm using Hibernate 2.1.4, Spring 1.1 RC1-dev (last night), Tomcat 5.0.27, Ant 1.6.2, Cygwin on Windows XP - powered by JDK 1.4.2.

Thanks,

Matt

Here is the relevant code from SettingsFactory:



So no, create-update is no hidden feature, it actually should not work at all. I find it pretty mysterious that it works :)

However just "update" should do exactly what you want, create the tables if nothing is there, update them otherwise. Note that the "update" part is not really maintained anymore however.

Using "update" seems to give me the same behavior as "create-update", so I'll go with that.


Are you saying this is not a good option to use? Why isn't it maintained anymore?

Mostly because of the poor quality of the JDBC driver metadata implementation, which makes it often impossible to figure out the current status of the database. And besides, updating the database to a new schema is difficult to do automatically - what happens to existing data for example.

Hey guys,

I am having the same problem here. with create-update my schema is blown away each time and that is unacceptable. A much sounder approach would be to create if not there, update if it is.

This is how I would expect a real application to function.

create seems like it only makes sense for certain kind of development....thus I do not understand the purpose of create-update.