This is the database maven plugin. Its intent is simply to make it easy to create and drop databases and an associated user when using maven. A typical usage would be for creating a database before integration testing and cleaning up afterwards. Supported databases for now are: * MySQL * PostgresQL Future versions of the plugin will aim at supporting: * Oracle * MS SQL * DB2 Note: This is plugin is different to the sql-maven-plugin in that it is more specific and aims at being simpler in doing this specific task. The sql-maven-plugin allows you to run any SQL statements against databases. You can find the SQL maven plugin at http://mojo.codehaus.org/sql-maven-plugin/