When I start up Hibernate (i.e add the mapping file and build a session factory), I always get a long output in the command console showing the (each class mapped, connection properties, reflection optimizers, etc.). Is there a way I can suppress these messages and get a "quiet" startup? Thanks a lot!

It's just log output using commons-logging. Configure log4j (or whatever logging library you use) as appropriate. I think there's even a default log4.properties bundled with the source.

I included the log4j property file and set the logging to a file. Now all logging messages go to a file.