I'm using hibernate 2.1 and jboss 3.2.3. We are trying to implement an architecture where we deploy several Enterprise Services that would be accessible to all apps via a Stateless Session Bean w/ hibernate under the covers. Therefore we have an EAR with these Enterprise services along with the mappings for these services in a SAR. The problem arises when other applications that run in their own space and have their own class loader would like to reference mapping files that are Enterprise Services. We could put all the mapping files in one place (the shared library would work I believe) but then whenever one of these separate applications has to be redeployed we have to worry about someone screwing something else up in the Enterprise mappings. Therefore we risk breaking other applications whenver someone has to redeploy.

MY QUESTION: Is there a way to deploy these mappings separately, but still allow the separate applications to reference the mappings in the Enterprise services? With the way the hibernate session seems to work, I can't see that there is a good way to do this.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!
M-

Can you describe more clearly what you want to do? Creating Services which are behind a Session Bean Facade should not be a problem with them using Hibernate under the covers. The other apps can then easily access them. I don't get your problem I suppose - do you want to share the SessionFactory or what?

Sorry this wasn't too clear. You are right, we haven't had a problem with the session bean facade, and the problem isn't when our applications want to access these services, but when our applications want to tie into the mapping files of these services. Let's say we have a "File" service that has a corresponding File.hbm.xml mapping file. Now one of our applications wants to subclass this "File" object which we can call "FileSubclass". This isn't a Service behind a session bean facade, this is just an app that has FileSublclass.hbm.xml as one of its mappings. This subclass mapping needs to reference the superclass "File" but I don't want all the mapping files in the same place because when our application that uses FileSubclass has a problem and has to redeploy I don't want to have to redeploy the File mapping as well because this Service hasn't changed and I don't want to possibly insert any bugs into that somehow. I'd like to be able to leave all these Services that are shared amongst all our apps alone if possible, but I don't believe that I can have mappings that reference each other like that in separate SARs??? I hope this, along with the original message clarifies my problem. Is there a way around this? Can these mapping files be in separate SARs and still work? My understanding is that they can't.

Thanks for your assistance
M-

This is not possible yet, and I don't think this is possible at all. I'd really suggest to rethink your application design and seperate "services" from persistent objects in your model.

Can hibernate recognize HBM files from within a JAR? I am looking to share my model classes between applications as well.

stupid question. sorry.