Creating databases at runtime with Hibernate?

Question

Is it possible to use Hibernate to, at runtime, create a new database (using the annotations of the model objects as schema, or from a normal schema file we define), and then get a connection to that database so that it can be used?

What we would like to do is, when a certain action happens (for instance a new user is created), we create a new databse for that user (from the defined annotations or simply a static schema), and then have a handle to that database so the user can write to it.

The user thing is simply for illustrating the concept...

Thanks!

Answer 1

At a high-level, what you would do to accomplish something like this is:

1. When the trigger event happens, execute the DDL to create a new database through a JDBC connection - probably makes the most sense for this schema to be generated by hbm2ddl at build-time.

2. Construct a new DataSource for this database, and a new SessionFactory from the DataSource

3. This SessionFactory should then be injected into (or looked up by) the data-access layer of your application, to find the appropriate SessionFactory for the User.

In short, the answer is to construct SessionFactory instances dynamically for each connection/database and make sure that your data-access layer knows how to find the appropriate SessionFactory for the criteria.

Answer 2

Agree with matt b, but are you sure it's a good idea to do such a thing?

I guess you have different customers and want to store each one's data in a separate database (or something like that). Why not storing all customers data in the same database, and filter these data by the customer id?