When I was using org.dbunit.dataset.xml.FlatXmlDataSet to create some database's records, I got a problem when I added a new column in a record which was at the end of the file, apparently the Metadata is created from the first record so when you try to add a new column, it doesn't get updated in the database. I'm using dbunit-2.4.9.jar, I fixed this problem putting the record with the new column at the beginning of the xml dataset file.