Take a look at: http://cruisecontrol.jboss.com/cc/buildresults/hibernate-mysql-testsuite There are much failings. As the initial problem as I think was a mysql bug that is fixed in 4.1.18 I think it's worth installing newer version. Could you suggest which version will best suite your needs (4.1.latest, 5.0.latest)? btw. hibernate can be tested against innodb and myisam. Currently it is tested only against innodb. Is this ok? Thanks, Aleksandar Kostadinov