Hi Kevin, Section 5.1 of the doc states, "If you configure OpenJPA to create the needed database schema on startup (see Section 1.3, " Runtime Forward Mapping "), OpenJPA must know all of your persistent classes up-front." I don't know specifically why this is necessary, but it may be to prevent unwanted/unnecessary database updates due to entities that just happen to be picked up in the classpath.
Adding the entity to your orm.xml will work without needing to specify the MetaDataFactory property. <entity class="com.dvelop.esb.esbruntime.service.persistenceservice.impl.openjpa.domain.Statement"/> -Jeremy
