[Hibernate] Why is the element required in the hibernate config (XML) file?

[Safdar Kureishy]

Hi,   I couldn’t find any discussion on this topic so am posting this to the newsgroup …   I am running into a situation where I want to initialize a Hibernate Configuration object from a hibernate cfg file, but without any mappings (i.e without any <mapping> elements). Instead, I want to add the mappings programmatically. However, during initialization of the Configuration object, I get a parser error since the DTD for the hibernate config file requires at least one <mapping> element be specified under the <session-factory> element.   So, a configuration like this:   <hibernate-configuration>             <session-factory>                         <property name=”XYZ”>lkjsdlfkjsd</property>                         …                         <mapping resource=”com/mycompany/X.hbm.xml”/> ## THIS PORTION IS REQUIRED ###             </session-factory> </hibernate-configuration>   … will give an error if the <mapping> element is removed, based on the DTD.   My question is, why is this required? It defeats the purpose of being able to specify different portions of the configuration separately …   Also, is there any way to not have to specify this <mapping> element? I tried giving an empty <mapping> element and one with <mapping resource=””/> but both throw errors as well.   Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.   Thanks, Safdar