A simple plugin for generating a database-schema from Hibernate 4 mapping-annotations. Hibernate comes with the buildin functionality, to automatically create or update the database schema. This functionality is configured in the session-configuraton via the parameter (see {{{http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/4.1/manual/en-US/html_single/#configuration-optional} Hibernate Reference Documentation - Chapter 3.4. Optional configuration properties}}). But doing so {{{http://stackoverflow.com/questions/221379/hibernate-hbm2ddl-auto-update-in-production} is not very wise}}, because you can easily corrupt or erase your production database, if this configuration parameter slips through to your production environment. Alternatively, you can {{{http://stackoverflow.com/questions/835961/how-to-creata-database-schema-using-hibernate} run the tools SchemaExport or SchemaUpdate by hand}}. But that is not very comfortable and being used to maven you will quickly long for a plugin, that does that job automatically for you, when you fire up your test cases. In the good old times, there was the {{{http://mojo.codehaus.org/maven-hibernate3/hibernate3-maven-plugin/} Maven Hibernate3 Plugin}}, that does this for you. But unfortunatly, this plugin is not compatible with Hibernate 4.x. Since there does not seem to be any successor for the Maven Hibernate3 Plugin and {{{http://www.google.de/search?q=hibernate4+maven+plugin} googeling}} does not help, I decided to write up this simple plugin (inspired by these two articles I found: {{{http://www.tikalk.com/alm/blog/schema-export-hibernate-4-and-maven} Schema Export with Hibernate 4 and Maven}} and {{{http://doingenterprise.blogspot.de/2012/05/schema-generation-with-hibernate-4-jpa.html} Schema generation with Hibernate 4, JPA and Maven}}).