I'm trying a simple Hibernate shard example (Yes, odd, 3.0.0.Beta2 released 4 years ago) using Hibernate Core 4.1.7 and Spring 3.1.2 and hit this issue during session factory initialization:

```
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'mySessionFactory' defined in class path resource [shardedspring-config.xml]: Instantiation of bean failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException: Factory method [public org.hibernate.SessionFactory it.sella.lab.crm.sys.persistence.ShardedSessionFactoryBuilder.createSessionFactory()] threw exception; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/hibernate/engine/SessionFactoryImplementor
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.ConstructorResolver.instantiateUsingFactoryMethod(ConstructorResolver.java:581)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.instantiateUsingFactoryMethod(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1015)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBeanInstance(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:911)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:485)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:456)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:294)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.getSingleton(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:225)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:291)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:193)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.preInstantiateSingletons(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:609)
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.finishBeanFactoryInitialization(AbstractApplicationContext.java:918)
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:469)
    at org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.<init>(ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.java:139)
    at org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.<init>(ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.java:83)
    at in.rixx.crm.model.Activity.<clinit>(Activity.java:17)

```

This is how I pick Spring and Hibernate:

```
<dependency>
        <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
        <artifactId>hibernate-core</artifactId>
        <version>4.1.7.Final</version>
 </dependency>
 <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        <version>3.1.2.RELEASE</version>
 </dependency> 

```

This doesn't seem like a issue with shards library - it looks like a general issue caused by refactored SessionFactoryImplementor class. Referring to <https://jira.springsource.org/browse/SPR-8885>, I've also switched to org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.HibernateTransactionManager for bean 'transactionmanager' - it isn't helping.

Is there any functional workaround right now for Spring 3.x and Hibernate 4.x?