Yes, they have deprecated the previous buildSessionFactory API, and it's quite easy to do well.. you can do something like this..
EDIT : ServiceRegistryBuilder is deprecated. you must use StandardServiceRegistryBuilder
public void testConnection() throws Exception {
logger.info("Trying to create a test connection with the database.");
Configuration configuration = new Configuration();
configuration.configure("hibernate_sp.cfg.xml");
StandardServiceRegistryBuilder ssrb = new StandardServiceRegistryBuilder().applySettings(configuration.getProperties());
SessionFactory sessionFactory = configuration.buildSessionFactory(ssrb.build());
Session session = sessionFactory.openSession();
logger.info("Test connection with the database created successfuly.");
}
For more reference and in depth detail, you can check the hibernate's official test case at https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate-orm/blob/master/hibernate-testing/src/main/java/org/hibernate/testing/junit4/BaseCoreFunctionalTestCase.java function (buildSessionFactory()).