Java 1.5, Oracle 9.2, and JDBC

Question

I am writing my first Java application to use JDBC. This is a stand-alone ( not Java EE ) application being developed on my workstation. For some reason, I cannot get the "Class.forName()" function to work. I get a "ClassNotFoundException" in my Eclipse IDE. For a while I thought it may be the driver was not in my class path, but I can type the class name "t oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver" a bit at a time, and the IDE autocompletes the class name for me ( meaning it knows about it ).
Below is the code I am using. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. The class12.zip file is in my classpath, and in Eclipse I included it as an external jar in my project settings.
package com.echostar.tools;
import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import junit.framework.TestCase;
import junit.framework.*;
import java.sql.*;
import oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver;
* @author john.gooch
* @file Collector.java
public class Collector {
     private String[] records;
     private static FileInputStream fis;
     private static Properties prop;
     private static Driver driver;
     public Collector() {
          super();
     public static void main(String[] args) {
          driver = (Driver ) Class.forName("oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver").newInstance();
}

Answer 1

Well, it's a runtime classpath problem, not a compiletime problem. I would think that what you've described would resolve it, but apparently not. Sorry I can't be more helpful.
Unrelated to your question, classes12.zip is only certified by Oracle for Java 1.2 and Java 1.3 There is a different library, ojdbc14.jar, for later Java. Only the 10gR2 version is certified by Oracle as being compatible with Java 1.5, but in practice I suspect an older version will still work well with Java 1.5. On the other hand, there were some very significant performance improvements in the 10g versions of the driver, and the newer driver is claimed to be cross-compatible with older versions of the database (and vice versa).
If I were developing new code for 9.2, I'd try the 10gR2 driver first...
Drivers are available at:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/java/sqlj_jdbc/index.html