At http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/4.1/devguide/en-US/html_single/#d5e4893, the Hibernate Developer Guide lists "cache properties". One of the listed properties is hibernate.cache.provider_class. This property was used in 3.x.x versions. This property doesn't have any effect in 4.x.x versions. It has been replaced by the cache property hibernate.cache.region.factory_class. This newer property isn't mentioned anywhere in Hibernate Developer Guide's current version.