Not finding the table and opening a database

[Mirror Spock]

I'm trying to write a standalone program that uses EJB persistence and I
have two problems:

1) How can you set up the connection so that it will open the database
if it exists and create one if it doesn't?

2) When I try to persist an object, it tells me that the table doesn't
exist. I'm using hibernate and mckoi and I was under the impression
that the persistence layer would take care of creating the table. What
could I be doing wrong?

Here's my error listing:
Exception in thread "main" javax.persistence.PersistenceException:
org.hibernate.exception.GenericJDBCException: could not insert: [Item]
at
org.hibernate.ejb.AbstractEntityManagerImpl.throwPersistenceException(AbstractEntityManagerImpl.java:630)
at
org.hibernate.ejb.AbstractEntityManagerImpl.persist(AbstractEntityManagerImpl.java:219)
at DatabaseClient.main(DatabaseClient.java:60)
Caused by: org.hibernate.exception.GenericJDBCException: could not
insert: [Item]
at
org.hibernate.exception.SQLStateConverter.handledNonSpecificException(SQLStateConverter.java:103)
at
org.hibernate.exception.SQLStateConverter.convert(SQLStateConverter.java:91)
at
org.hibernate.exception.JDBCExceptionHelper.convert(JDBCExceptionHelper.java:43)
at
org.hibernate.id.insert.AbstractSelectingDelegate.performInsert(AbstractSelectingDelegate.java:40)
at
org.hibernate.persister.entity.AbstractEntityPersister.insert(AbstractEntityPersister.java:2158)
at
org.hibernate.persister.entity.AbstractEntityPersister.insert(AbstractEntityPersister.java:2638)
at
org.hibernate.action.EntityIdentityInsertAction.execute(EntityIdentityInsertAction.java:48)
at org.hibernate.engine.ActionQueue.execute(ActionQueue.java:248)
at
org.hibernate.event.def.AbstractSaveEventListener.performSaveOrReplicate(AbstractSaveEventListener.java:298)
at
org.hibernate.event.def.AbstractSaveEventListener.performSave(AbstractSaveEventListener.java:181)
at
org.hibernate.event.def.AbstractSaveEventListener.saveWithGeneratedId(AbstractSaveEventListener.java:107)
at
org.hibernate.ejb.event.EJB3PersistEventListener.saveWithGeneratedId(EJB3PersistEventListener.java:49)
at
org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultPersistEventListener.entityIsTransient(DefaultPersistEventListener.java:131)
at
org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultPersistEventListener.onPersist(DefaultPersistEventListener.java:87)
at
org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultPersistEventListener.onPersist(DefaultPersistEventListener.java:38)
at org.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.firePersist(SessionImpl.java:618)
at org.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.persist(SessionImpl.java:592)
at org.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.persist(SessionImpl.java:596)
at
org.hibernate.ejb.AbstractEntityManagerImpl.persist(AbstractEntityManagerImpl.java:213)
... 1 more
Caused by: com.mckoi.database.jdbc.MSQLException: Table 'APP.Item' does
not exist.
at
com.mckoi.database.jdbcserver.AbstractJDBCDatabaseInterface.handleExecuteThrowable(AbstractJDBCDatabaseInterface.java:289)
at
com.mckoi.database.jdbcserver.AbstractJDBCDatabaseInterface.execQuery(AbstractJDBCDatabaseInterface.java:479)
at
com.mckoi.database.jdbcserver.JDBCDatabaseInterface.execQuery(JDBCDatabaseInterface.java:251)
at
com.mckoi.database.jdbc.MConnection.executeQuery(MConnection.java:453)
at
com.mckoi.database.jdbc.MConnection.executeQueries(MConnection.java:436)
at
com.mckoi.database.jdbc.MStatement.executeQueries(MStatement.java:193)
at com.mckoi.database.jdbc.MStatement.executeQuery(MStatement.java:167)
at
com.mckoi.database.jdbc.MPreparedStatement.executeUpdate(MPreparedStatement.java:203)
at
org.hibernate.id.insert.AbstractSelectingDelegate.performInsert(AbstractSelectingDelegate.java:33)
... 16 more
Thanks,
* Robinson