Accessing .properties file

[dougman82]

I'm using JPA/Hibernate to interface with a database. My entity classes use annotations. However, apparently in the production environments, the actual database schema is variable (as in, I don't know what it will be). So, to mitigate this, I decided to override the @Table annotations with an XML mapping definition in an orm.xml file. The idea is that upon deployment, the installer can edit a simple .properties file to specify the existing db schema.

I set this up in the Spring configuration like this:

<bean id="sessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean">
	<property name="packagesToScan" value="my.packages" />
	<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
	<property name="hibernateProperties">
		<props>
			<prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</prop>
			<prop key="hibernate.show_sql">true</prop>
		</props>
	</property>
	<property name="mappingResources">
		<list>
		           <value>orm.xml</value>
		</list>
	</property>
</bean>

Then, inside that orm.xml (this is simplified):

<entity-mappings>
	<entity class="my.packages.MyRecord" name="myRecord">
		<table name="schema.MYTABLE" />
	</entity>
</entity-mappings>

After I set this up, and verified that it works correctly, I tried to figure out how to substitute the "schema" in the orm.xml file with something from a Java .properties file. I guess I got spoiled in the Spring configuration where I used a PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer bean, and just assumed this was doable. How can I accomplish this? Basically, what I want to do in the orm.xml file is something similar to:

<table name="${schema-property}.MYTABLE" />

If this is not possible inside the orm.xml file, is there any way to move the configuration that I currently have in the orm.xml file into my Spring application context configuration file?

If there really is no way to do this, can someone direct me to the class that I need to subclass in order to add this functionality? I am a victim of being unable to make changes to how the databases are configured, and I'm already going past due on this task.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[gwa]

Declaring the schema in your orm is definitely a bad idea.

Why not simply link the correct schema as the default schema for a login and use this login to connect the DB?

The other option can be to create multi orm.xml file (orm_xxx.xml, orm_yyy.xml) and set your property in your entitymanager declaration ?

...
<property name="mappingResources">
    <list>
          <value>${my.orm.file}</value>
    </list>
...
</property>