My standalone JSE application, which currently uses hibernate 3.2.5, needs to check if the schema exists in the database, and if not, then generate the entire database.

This was previously being accomplished with a gigantic static sql query for creating the tables. If the schema isn't there upon startup of application, then we'd use straight JDBC to fire this static sql and create the tables. It worked alright.

However, if the domain object changes, then we have to update this giant static line of SQL to reflect these changes and accurately generate the schema.

I'm aware of a tool called hbm2ddl which can be used with ANT to create the database at BUILD time. However, I absolutely need to be able to do this at RUNTIME.

Is it possible to utilize some of the jar files in Hibernate Tools, to actually generate the schema from the hbm mappings, and create the tables at runtime??? Has it been done before?? I've done lots of searching through hibernate forums and google, and although creating the schema at build time is very common, nobody seems to have a need to do it at runtime.

The reason this must be done at runtime is that it is common for the database of this application to actually be deleted by the customer every so often. The app simply needs to be sensitive to this, and then use hibernate to generate the database tables again.

Any ideas? anyone know of any tutorials on this at least?

UPDATE:


SchemaExport is a class I found while browsing the hibernate tools API:

org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.SchemaExport;

I'm trying something like this right now (not working):