I'm developing a Spring(2.5.6)+Hibernate(3.2.6) web application to connect to a custom database. For that I have custom JDBC Driver and Hibernate Dialect. I know for sure that these custom classes work (hard coded stuff on my unit tests).

The problem, I guess, is with the order on which things get loaded by Spring. Basically:

1. Custom Database initializes
2. Spring load beans from web.xml
3. Spring loads ServletBeans(applicationContext.xml)
4. Hibernate kicks in: shows version and all the properties correctly loaded.
5. Hibernate's HbmBinder runs (maps all my classes)
6. LocalSessionFactoryBean - Building new Hibernate SessionFactory
7. DriverManagerConnectionProvider - using driver: MyCustomJDBCDriver at CustomDBURL
8. I get a SQLException: No suitable driver found for CustomDBURL
9. Hibernate loads the Custom Dialect
10. My CustomJDBCDriver finally gets registered with DriverManager (log messages)
11. SettingsFactory runs
12. SchemaExport runs (hbm2ddl)
13. I get a SQLException: No suitable driver found for CustomDBURL (again?!)
14. Application get successfully deployed but there are no tables on my custom Database.

Things that I tried so far:

• Different techniques for passing hibernate properties: embedded in the 'sessionFactory' bean, loaded from a hibernate.properties file. Nothing worked but I didn't try with hibernate.cfg.xml file neither with a dataSource bean yet.
• MyCustomJDBCDriver has a static initializer block that registers it self with the DriverManager.
• Tried different combinations of lazy initializing (lazy-init="true") of the Spring beans but nothing worked.

My custom JDBC driver should be the first thing to be loaded - not sure if by Spring but...!

Can anyone give me a solution for this or maybe a hint for what else I could try? I can provide more details (huge stack traces for instance) if that helps.

Thanks in advance.