Hibernate version: 3.2.5ga

Name and version of the database you are using:
MySQL 5.0.42

I currently have a Hibernate based application which has a Session factory managed by Spring. As this is duplicated across many projects on the application server we have seperated out annotated domain and dao classes into a seperate Maven artifact. We would like to share a single deployment and SessionFactory across all applications running on the server. From the Java Persistence with Hibernate book the ideal solution seems to be to simply share the session factory using JNDI. Our Spring configuration can easily be updated to obtain the SessionFactory from JNDI.

My problem is what is currently the best practice of getting the SessionFactory into JNDI and sharing the deployment? The Hibernate and JBoss wiki both make references to the HAR deployer. However this seems to have been discountinued in the more recent versions of JBoss AS. We are using the Enerprise Application Platform 4.2. HAR deployments are only mentioned in one line of the manual and no alternative is offered. The old tutorials also only mention HBM mapping files being auto detected and not annotated classes.

What is the best way to acheive this? Any tips, code, links very much appreciated.

Thank you,
Martin.

Bump.

I'm looking into this as well. However, I'm using JBoss AS 4.0.2 and the included deployer is very outdated and uses Hibernate 3.0.x. I'm wondering if it is worth the trouble updating this deployer with Hibernate 3.2.5, as it impacts the entire server.

When looking at the CaveatEmpor example, which I understand is some kind of blue print, the HAR approach is not used.

Which approach did you end up using?

/Anders

OK, after hours of reading, this is what I have found out:

* The HARDeployer is removed in favor of the SARDeployer (in later JBoss AS that is, not sure exactly in what version this happened though).
* The SARDeployer then accepts .har archives as well (earlier on, the HARDeployer handled these). In .har files, mapping files are automatically discovered (possibly you need to turn on some configuration for this to happen).
* Using a .har file will utilize the Hibernate jmx bean included in JBoss AS (org.jboss.hibernate.jmx.Hibernate), which differs slightly from the on included in Hibernate itself (se next bullet).
* In the Hibernate distro (I've used 3.2.5), there is a jmx bean (org.hibernate.jmx.HibernateService) that makes it possible to initialize a Hibernate SessionFactory through a (jmx) service. Create a .sar file, define this in the jboss-service.xml, and include the necessary hibernate jars, pojos, mappings. Mapping files are NOT automatically discovered though.
* You could also initialize Hibernate and create the SessionFactory within your code, in the way it's done in the CaveatEmptor.

Regardless which way you go, the SessionFactory is/can be bound to jndi for you to look up when needed.

As I'm using JBoss AS 4.0.2 I've decided to build a .sar file and not use a deployer (I've removed the old included jboss-hibernate.deployer), as I guess it would require quite a bit of work to upgrade it. I decided it would be a nicer solution to have the SessionFactory initialized as a service instead of by static code blocks or some other home-grown solution.