Ok, I found part of the problem. Validator is creating column-level check constraints (Column.setCheckConstraint). However those are ignored if the dialect reports that it does not "supportsColumnCheck". HSQLDialect happens to be one such dialect. Seems to me though that TheRightThing to do there is to add them as table-level check constraints, if the dialect additionally says that it "supportsTableCheck". Anyway, thats not what it does today. When I first looked at the test I saw "ConstraintViolationException" and thought "org.hibernate.exception.ConstraintViolationException" (which is what is happening on h2 and most every other db out there i assume), but it is actually checking "javax.validation.ConstraintViolationException". On Fri, 2010-05-21 at 11:09 -0500, Steve Ebersole wrote: -- Steve Ebersole <steve(a)hibernate.org&gt; http://hibernate.org