I've added a new setting, AvailableSettings.USE_NEW_METADATA_MAPPINGS, that tells BaseCoreFunctionalTestCase to build the SessionFactory from the new metadata. I've checked in a new test, org.hibernate.test.ops.SimpleOpsTest, that configures this new setting and successfully saves, updates, gets, loads, merges and deletes an entity with a basic property. For now, Configuration is still used to set up properties for the test and create the BasicServiceRegistry before building the metadata and session factory. Currently, Configuration does not support HBM XML using hibernate-mapping-4.0.xsd and the headers on existing HBM XML mappings result in exceptions when applied to MetadataImpl. I'm not sure how that should be remedied. Time to get some sleep... Gail