Question

I am working on a Java application that will use some Hibernate (annotated by JPA) classes, backed by a HSQLDB datasource (DBCP BasicDataSource). I am trying to manually tweak the HSQLDB “.script” file (which I can’t for the life of me find the authoritative name for by web searching/reading the docs; it’s only mentioned in passing) to rapidly add some new in-memory tables for testing. The problem is, any errors that occur when HSQLDB is running this script don’t seem to be reported or logged anywhere. For instance, if I have an INSERT statement within that .script (a very common usage scenario to set up an initial dataset), and there is a problem with it (like incorrect date format, incorrect number of columns, etc.), nothing is ever reported, and there is no exception. I only notice later on when the HQL query I construct in the test case throws an exception due to a NULL result, which the program is not expecting since the data set should be initialized properly at that point.

The only reason I even figured out there was a problem with the INSERT statement was by performing them on a raw SQLConnection on the HSQLDB datasource, rather than doing them in the .script file, and observing the SQLExceptions that were thrown at that point.

Logging in general seems to be working and HSQLDB is logging tons of other messages of all thresholds very frequently during startup to stdout. So I’m flummoxed as to why those don’t include obvious SQLExceptions that must be getting thrown at some point.

Any ideas on what to try? Some configuration I’m missing, perhaps? I tried searching all through the HSQLDB docs to no avail, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the answer isn’t there. In case it matters, the usage scenario I’m trying to get this working for is a Spring application context initialized within a JUnit test case (via a FileSystemXmlApplicationContext object). Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

I don’t think this is supported simply because the script file containing the definition of tables and other database objects, plus the data for non-cached tables is not supposed to contain syntactically incorrect statements (they are supposed to be written by HSQLDB itself).

But since you’re using Hibernate, my suggestion would to use the import.sql feature announced in the Rotterdam JBug and Hibernate’s import.sql blog post:

import.sql: easily import data in your unit tests

Hibernate has a neat little feature
that is heavily under-documented and
unknown. You can execute an SQL script
during the SessionFactory creation
right after the database schema
generation to import data in a fresh
database. You just need to add a file
named import.sql in your classpath
root and set either create or
create-drop as your
hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto property.

I use it for Hibernate Search in
Action now that I have started the
query chapter. It initializes my
database with a fresh set of data for
my unit tests. JBoss Seam also uses it
a lot in the various examples.
import.sql is a very simple feature
but is quite useful at time. Remember
that the SQL might be dependent on
your database (ah portability!).

#import.sql file
delete from PRODUCTS
insert into PRODUCTS (PROD_ID, ASIN, TITLE, PRICE, IMAGE_URL, DESCRIPTION) values ('1', '630522577X', 'My Fair Lady', 19.98, '630522577X.jpg', 'My Fair blah blah...');
insert into PRODUCTS (PROD_ID, ASIN, TITLE, PRICE, IMAGE_URL, DESCRIPTION) values ('2', 'B00003CXCD', 'Roman Holiday ', 12.98, 'B00003CXCD.jpg', 'We could argue that blah blah');

For more information about this
feature, check Eyal’s blog, he
wrote a nice little entry about it.
Remember if you want to add additional
database objects (indexes, tables and
so on), you can also use the auxiliary
database objects feature.

Another option would be to use DbUnit. But if (non) portability is not an issue, I’d use the import.sql trick.

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