You can check the version by looking at the MANIFEST.MF file in Hibernate3.jar I will tell you that its Hibernate 3.2.3.GA You can try upgrading JBoss to 4.2.1 I don't think that is your issue. What happens when you try Character[] instead of String? What happens when you remove the Hibernate Validations @NotNull and @Length? Try getting the column mapping working first before you move on. Also I am not sure @Length or even the JPA length property of @Column will work with a Character[] datatype because they are stated to work with String only. Again this would all be easier with a varchar2/String but you said you are locked into char datatype. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4093690#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...