Io Exception connecting to Oracle from apache-tomcat-6.0.14 - weird problem

Question

Hi all,
I'm in a desperate situation here. Trying to solve this problem for a week now. I have searched all over the internet but coul not find any solution. I developed an application using netbeans 5.5.1 with VWD pack and it works fine. The application accesses an oracle db on another server which works fine on my development machine. Now I deployed to oracle 9i and apache-tomcat-6.0.14 on a solaris machine and encountered this error :
java.sql.SQLException: Io exception: The Network Adapter could not establish the connection
on further troubleshooting I tried this code on the server.
java.sql.DriverManager.registerDriver(new oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver());
java.sql.Connection conn = java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:oracle:thin:@servername:1521:sid", "username", "pswd");
and it works alright. The connection was established wothout error.
But when I try
Class.forName("oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver").newInstance();
javax.naming.Context init new javax.naming.Context();
javax.naming.Context ctx = (javax.naming.Context)init.lookup("java:comp/env");
javax.sql.DataSource ds = (javax.sql.DataSource) ctx.lookup("jdbc/dataSource");
java.sql.Connection conn = ds.getConnection();
I still get the same io Exception error.
Now I need to fetch the values from the context file, because my application uses :-
CachedRowSetXImpl portal_tabsRowSet= new CachedRowSetXImpl();
CachedRowSetDataProvider portal_tabsDataProvider= new CachedRowSetDataProvider();
as follows :-
portal_tabsRowSet.setDataSourceName("java:comp/env/jdbc/dataSource");
portal_tabsRowSet.setCommand("SELECT * FROM PORTAL_TABS");
portal_tabsRowSet.setTableName("PORTAL_TABS");
portal_tabsDataProvider.setCachedRowSet((javax.sql.rowset.CachedRowSet)getValue("#{SessionBean1.portal_tabsRowSet}"));
here is my context.xml
<Context path="/AppPortal">
<Resource auth="Container" driverClassName="oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver" m
axActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" name="jdbc/dataSource" password="pswd" ty
pe="javax.sql.DataSource" url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@servername:1521:sid" username="username"/>
</Context>
here is my web.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd"><context-param><param-name>javax.faces.STATE_SAVING_METHOD</param-name><param-value>server</param-value></context-param><context-param><param-name>javax.faces.CONFIG_FILES</param-name><param-value>/WEB-INF/navigation.xml,/WEB-INF/managed-beans.xml</param-value></context-param><context-param><param-name>com.sun.faces.validateXml</param-name><param-value>true</param-value></context-param><context-param><param-name>com.sun.faces.verifyObjects</param-name><param-value>false</param-value></context-param><filter><filter-name>UploadFilter</filter-name><filter-class>com.sun.rave.web.ui.util.UploadFilter</filter-class><init-param><description>
The maximum allowed upload size in bytes. If this is set
to a negative value, there is no maximum. The default
value is 1000000.
</description><param-name>maxSize</param-name><param-value>1000000</param-value></init-param><init-param><description>
The size (in bytes) of an uploaded file which, if it is
exceeded, will cause the file to be written directly to
disk instead of stored in memory. Files smaller than or
equal to this size will be stored in memory. The default
value is 4096.
</description><param-name>sizeThreshold</param-name><param-value>4096</param-value></init-param></filter><filter-mapping><filter-name>UploadFilter</filter-name><servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name></filter-mapping><servlet><servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name><servlet-class>javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet</servlet-class><load-on-startup> 1 </load-on-startup></servlet><servlet><servlet-name>ExceptionHandlerServlet</servlet-name><servlet-class>com.sun.errorhandler.ExceptionHandler</servlet-class><init-param><param-name>errorHost</param-name><param-value>localhost</param-value></init-param><init-param><param-name>errorPort</param-name><param-value>24444</param-value></init-param></servlet><servlet><servlet-name>ThemeServlet</servlet-name><servlet-class>com.sun.rave.web.ui.theme.ThemeServlet</servlet-class></servlet><servlet-mapping><servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name><url-pattern>*.jspx</url-pattern></servlet-mapping><servlet-mapping><servlet-name>ExceptionHandlerServlet</servlet-name><url-pattern>/error/ExceptionHandler</url-pattern></servlet-mapping><servlet-mapping><servlet-name>ThemeServlet</servlet-name><url-pattern>/theme/*</url-pattern></servlet-mapping><session-config><session-timeout>5</session-timeout></session-config><welcome-file-list>
<welcome-file>JSCreator_index.jsp</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list><error-page><exception-type>javax.servlet.ServletException</exception-type><location>/error/ExceptionHandler</location></error-page><error-page><exception-type>java.io.IOException</exception-type><location>/error/ExceptionHandler</location></error-page><error-page><exception-type>javax.faces.FacesException</exception-type><location>/error/ExceptionHandler</location></error-page><error-page><exception-type>com.sun.rave.web.ui.appbase.ApplicationException</exception-type><location>/error/ExceptionHandler</location></error-page><jsp-config><jsp-property-group><url-pattern>*.jspf</url-pattern><is-xml>true</is-xml></jsp-property-group></jsp-config><resource-ref><description>Creator generated DataSource Reference</description><res-ref-name>jdbc/dataSource</res-ref-name><res-type>javax.sql.DataSource</res-type><res-auth>Container</res-auth></resource-ref></web-app>
This is really strange to me.
Please help!

Answer 1

I haven't studied your problem in detail and don't actually use Tomcat 6, but in earlier versions of Tomcat the handling of JNDI leaves a lot to be desired. If you search this forum for posts about Tomcat and JNDI, you will find some useful information.
One thing I found was that you really need to use the context.xml file in your Meta-inf directory, putting the datasource anywhere else gets into one kind of trouble or another. I tried using server.xml, a context file for the application and the web-inf file.