Spring + Hibernate + H2 Embedded DB. How is the data saved?

Im new to embedded databases but I got it running at least. What confuses me is that my data is not saved between runs. I mean wouldn't that be nice for testing? I don't wanna add data to my database every time i run the application

So I searched for a way to do this and I found that I shall configure a hibernate connection URL which I tried like this

props.put("hibernate.connection.url", "jdbc:h2:~/test");

in my HibernateConfiguration.java. Without success though, no errors but also nothing saved, and I did not find that test file that should be created from that URL. (Running windows and checked my user folder)

I also saw that its possible to do like this

<jdbc:embedded-database id="dataSource" type="H2">
    <jdbc:script location="classpath:db-schema.sql"/>
    <jdbc:script location="classpath:db-test-data.sql"/>
</jdbc:embedded-database>

And execute the scripts every time i run the application, but the thing is that I want hibernate to handle all the creating of tables etc.

How is this normally done?

I searched for some hours now but haven't still got it.

Ps. if it's needed i'll post all my configs.

Edit: Updated my question to contain focus on one question and included my configs.

HibernateConfiguration.java package com.courseinfo.project;

import java.util.Properties;

import javax.sql.DataSource;

import org.hibernate.dialect.H2Dialect;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager;
import org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean;

import com.courseinfo.project.model.Course;

@Configuration
public class HibernateConfiguration {

    @Value("#{dataSource}")
    private DataSource dataSource;

    @Bean
    public AnnotationSessionFactoryBean sessionFactoryBean() {
        Properties props = new Properties();
        props.put("hibernate.dialect", H2Dialect.class.getName());
        props.put("hibernate.format_sql", "true");
        props.put("hibernate.connection.url", "jdbc:h2:~/test");

        AnnotationSessionFactoryBean bean = new AnnotationSessionFactoryBean();
        bean.setAnnotatedClasses(new Class[]{Course.class});        
        bean.setHibernateProperties(props);
        bean.setDataSource(this.dataSource);
        bean.setSchemaUpdate(true);
        return bean;
    }

    @Bean
    public HibernateTransactionManager transactionManager() {
        return new HibernateTransactionManager( sessionFactoryBean().getObject() );
    }

}

servlet-context.xml where i only added the embedded database tag.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans:beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:jdbc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc/spring-jdbc-3.0.xsd"
        default-lazy-init="true">

    <!-- DispatcherServlet Context: defines this servlet's request-processing infrastructure -->

    <!-- Enables the Spring MVC @Controller programming model -->
    <annotation-driven />

    <!-- Handles HTTP GET requests for /resources/** by efficiently serving up static resources in the ${webappRoot}/resources directory -->
    <resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/resources/" />

    <!-- Resolves views selected for rendering by @Controllers to .jsp resources in the /WEB-INF/views directory -->
    <beans:bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <beans:property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
        <beans:property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
    </beans:bean>

    <context:component-scan base-package="com.courseinfo.project" />


    <jdbc:embedded-database id="dataSource" type="H2"/>


</beans:beans>

There of course also a pom where i got all dependencies but i don't think that is necessary.

I'm creating a object (Course.java) and saving that to the db, that's fine and i can load it again. But when I change my code and the application is reloaded the object doesn't exist anymore.

Edit2: I'm adding data like this.

Binding a session factory.

@Autowired
private SessionFactory sessionFactory;

Adding a my Course object to the database like this.

Course course = new Course();
course.setCourseId("IDA512");
Session s = sessionFactory.openSession();
s.saveOrUpdate(course);
s.flush();
s.clear();
Course course2 = (Course) s.get(Course.class, "IDA511");
s.close();

This works fine and i can get that course. However, when I run the application next time there is no course with id IDA511 and i getting a null pointer exception. Does this mean that the course is only saved in the session maybe? hum