A lot of it is just in my head :) Ultimately the plan is to finally actually support validation and migration (update) in 5.x. The actual backings to these are also pluggable now via service repository. You can see the details for this part in org.hibernate.tool.schema.spi.SchemaManagementTool. TBH, I wonder if is actually better to have the individual tools (SchemaCreator, SchemaDropper, etc) be pluggable rather than the whole thing. That's more like the way proper way. The one I see getting replaced is SchemaMigrator, although I can see someone swapping SchemaValidator too. I have spoken with the LiquiBase developer before about SchemaMigrator; it would rock to offer transparent support for LiquiBase here. As far as the rest, I will try to get the thoughts in my head down on "paper". Specific improvements off top of head: 1) Better (imo) interaction from Dialect via specific org.hibernate.tool.schema.spi.Exporter contracts 2) (not done yet) Better validation through the concept of "type families" for column validation : org.hibernate.type.descriptor.sql.JdbcTypeFamilyInformation 3) Better handling of catalog/schema - this is multi part On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 4:17 AM, Max Rydahl Andersen <manderse(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote: