I have just started working with Hibernate and I am having trouble
using hibernate.cfg.xml in place of hibernate.properties.

This rather minimal .properties file works fine:

hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.DerbyDialect
hibernate.connection.driver_class=org.apache.derby.jdbc.EmbeddedDriver
hibernate.connection.url=jdbc:derby:MyDB
hibernate.connection.pool_size=10

However when I try the following hibernate.cfg.xml instead it doesn't
appear to pick up any configuration at all:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration PUBLIC
"-//Hibernate/Hibernate Configuration DTD//EN"
"http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-configuration-3.0.dtd">

<hibernate-configuration>
<session-factory>
     <property
name="connection.driver_class">org.apache.derby.jdbc.EmbeddedDriver</
property>
     <property name="connection.url">jdbc:derby:MyDB</property>
     <property name="connection.pool_size">10</property>
     <property name="dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.DerbyDialect</
property>
</session-factory>
</hibernate-configuration>

I am just using core Java in Eclipse and have placed both files at the
root of my classpath in the bin directory. Attempting to run
with .cfg.xml gives me the following output:

20-Nov-2007 17:23:28 org.hibernate.cfg.Environment <clinit>
INFO: Hibernate 3.2.5
20-Nov-2007 17:23:28 org.hibernate.cfg.Environment <clinit>
INFO: hibernate.properties not found

and further down:

20-Nov-2007 17:23:28
org.hibernate.connection.UserSuppliedConnectionProvider configure
WARNING: No connection properties specified - the user must supply
JDBC connections
Exception in thread "main" org.hibernate.HibernateException: Hibernate
Dialect must be explicitly set
    at
org.hibernate.dialect.DialectFactory.determineDialect(DialectFactory.java:
57)
    at
org.hibernate.dialect.DialectFactory.buildDialect(DialectFactory.java:
39)
    at
org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory.determineDialect(SettingsFactory.java:
426)
    at
org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory.buildSettings(SettingsFactory.java:
128)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.buildSettings(Configuration.java:
2009)
    at
org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.buildSessionFactory(Configuration.java:
1292)
    at com.icogs.mailist.security.ListLists.main(ListLists.java:17)

Is my .cfg.xml file wrong or just not being found? I don't know where
else to put it, it is in the classpath.