We are developing a set of applications in Eclipse that share the same database connection. However, each application sees its own set of Hibernate mapping files. Say, a calendar application might see its own mappings plus the ones from an address book application. Yet another app might also see the address book mappings. You get the idea.

My question is: is it possible to configure Hibernate in such a way that we can
init different Configuration objects for each application while sharing a "global" Hibernate connection pool? Or would each instance of Configuration come with its own connection pool?

Thanks.

It is possible and very appropriate to use a J2EE coneection pool, thus it can be easily shareable.
If the conenction pool is configured by Hibernate (is hibernate.proeprties) then , there is no way to share it. You can implement you own Connection pool provider allowing that however.