Hibernate: hbm2ddl.auto=update in production?

Question

Is it okay to run Hibernate applications configured with hbm2ddl.auto=update to update the database schema in a production environment?

Answer 1

No, it's risky.

Despite the most immeasurable efforts of the Hibernate team, you just cannot rely on automatic updates in production. Inscribe your patches, analyze them with DBA, examine them, then implement them manually.

Theoretically, if hbm2ddl update ran in development, it should operate in production too. But in actuality, it's not always the situation.

Even if it went OK, it may be sub-optimal. DBAs are paid that much for a cause.