Is there an API in Hibernate that will return the database table name given the a Hibernate persistent object? Is there also an API that will return the column name given a peristent object's attribute name?

Hibernate version: 3.0

Mapping documents:

Code between sessionFactory.openSession() and session.close():

Full stack trace of any exception that occurs:

Name and version of the database you are using:

The generated SQL (show_sql=true):

Debug level Hibernate log excerpt:

Yes. Configuration.getMappings() will give u an iterator for all the mappings that were passed to Configuration. The Mappings class has methods to get all kinds of metadata.
Refer to the Javadocs for net.sf.cfg package.

Is it possible to get a Configuration instance using a SessionFactory object?

Well, you could do a
SessionFactory.getClassMetaData(Class persistetClass)
to get the class-metadata and from which you can get the rest of the information

For some reason the getCollectionMapping(String) operation is returning null for a class name that I know exists in the Hibernate mappings and that I am actively using in my Java program. What would cause this operation to return null instead of the Collection?

String className = MyTestObject.getClass().getName();
// Given Configuration configuration has already be initialized.
Collection collectoin = configuration.getCollectionMapping(className);

OK. I found a workaround. Given a persistent "object":

String dbTableName = null;
if (null != object) {
String className = object.getClass().getName();
PersistentClass pClass = configuration.getClassMapping(className);
if (null != pClass) {
dbTableName = pClass.getTable().getName();
}
}

My next problem is determining how to query actual column name in the database given that the persistent Java object's column name is known.

You need to enter the fully qualified name of the class (Package + class). It has to match the same class that was passed in during the configuration. I suspect your package information did not get passed to getCollectionMapping thus resulting in null values.