I'm trying to put my hibernate mapping files outside the webapps classpath. Is this possible? How would I then include the the files in hibernate.cfg.xml? Absolute path (would prefer relative). Thanks for the help.

Well, for a resource (the hmb files) to get loaded, they have to be in the classpath.

A quick check of the documentation makes me think that you cannot load the resources from outside the classpath without some notable tinkering

Sure. Just load the mapping as a file instead of a resource.