[xwiki-users] Acessing database from component/plugin

Hi! I'm new to XWiki (especially to new "Component" design). My question is: can my component/plugin access the database the same way XWiki does? I.e. if I write Hibernate mappings for my own objects and reference them in XWiki hibernate.cfg.xml, how can my plugin/component gain access to Hibernate session object? Previously I've written a plugin for XWiki and had to connect to database separately from XWiki. It was not convenient at all and I want to avoid this practice in further development. Moreover, I had some problems with using connection pool, so I think it would be wiser to use XWiki database connection.