It seems that "javax.persistence.database-product-name" is primarily defined for schema generation and not evaluated for regular bootstrapping in Hibernate. It's only really used in HibernateSchemaManagementTool, or am I missing something here?

Other than that, it would indeed be usable for what we're looking for. As far as I can see, EclipseLink evaluates that property too before resolving the database product name from a live Connection. Could Hibernate possibly revisit its standard DialectResolver implementation to evaluate that property for regular bootstrapping as well, shortcutting its runtime resolution to assume a specific database and just evaluate the version for a specific dialect? This seems pretty straightforward given the current StandardDialectResolver implementation, selecting a Database enum entry by name from the property and then calling resolveDialect on it for the version.

If this is indeed feasible and preferable, I'm happy to repurpose this JIRA ticket for it.