Hi,

I'm using hibernate (annotations) to auto create the structure for the SQL tables in my project. I would however, like to know the best practice for auto initializing a table with some default data.

More specifically I will have a table "Authorities":

|AUTHORITIES |
|ID | ROLE |
----------------------
| 0 | ROLE_XYZ|
| 1 | ROLE_123|

etc...

Users of the system would then associate with this table in a Many-To-One relationship.


Now enough of the boring background story. What I'd like to understand, is the method I should use to have a few ROLE (varchar) entries auto populated into the DB as the table is created.

Ideas I've considered thus far are:
ANT scripts
Alternately, using Enums.

If anyone has an idea on the best way to do this, please let me know.

Thanks in advance.


[b]Hibernate version:3.1.1

Hibernate's schema-export will recognize a classpath resource named 'import.sql' as a classpath resource when it is run. That file can contain any arbitrary sql statements you want it to, which are then sent to the database after schema generation has completed.

Another solution is to use AuxliaryDatabaseObjects to populate the table data. In the mapping files, these are represented by <database-object/> elements. Not sure if that feature is available via annotations yet...

Thanks Steve, the "import.sql" option I overlooked should work. And you are correct, the second solution is not availalbe in annotations.

This task to to me seems really common, so I was surprised I could not find more posts or reference material describing how to go about doing this. While the 'import.sql' option is certainly appreciated, it unfortuantly couples "initialization" files with "configuration" files. Ahhh well.