For test purposes I create org.hibernate.eclipse.console.test -> org.hibernate.eclipse.console.db.test.BigDBCreateTest - the main goal of this class is creation test database with specified number of related tables. Then with help of BigDBCreateTest I create a big enough databases with different number of tables in it. And then I try to test hibernate plugins performance. I create a configuration for my test db.

In Hibernate Console I try to expand tree. Here is a time:

200 tables in db - takes 40 seconds;
300 tables in db - takes 2 minutes 45 seconds;
500 tables in db - too long I do not get results.

Remark: I use MySQL as test db. 3000 tables - too much for MySQL. Also - it is intresting - when I create such big db - I try to expand Hibernate Console tree - I get MySQL exception - but in this case Hibernate Console display all items quickly!

JBIDE-2162 is related;
JBIDE-2163 & JBIDE-2164 are related by implication - till the moment when I have fixed its in my test environment - I can't see performance problems.