Java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: oracle/jdbc/OracleDriver

Question

I am trying to connect from a servlet running in Tomcat on my desktop to an instance of Personal Oracle9i running on my desktop. I am gettiung NoClassDefFoundError. The code compiles.
I know it is a path issue but I am at a loss to figure out where. Tomcat does not find the driver however it is in my machines path.
Running following:
j2sdk1.4.1_02
Personal Oracle 9.2
Tomcat 4.1.29
Windows XP
I have added the location of Classes12.zip to the class path: .;c:\Sun\AppServer\lib\j2ee.jar;c:\Sun\AppServer\lib\j2ee-svc.jar;d:\oracle\ora92\jdbc\lib\classes12.zip;
The "root cause" of error is:
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: oracle/jdbc/OracleDriver
     at OOP.OracleConnectionDemo.doPost(OracleConnectionDemo.java:34)
     at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:760)
The code is as follows:
import java.sql.*;
import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver;
//import oracle.jdbc.driver.*; //did not work either
public class OracleConnectionDemo extends HttpServlet {
     public void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp)
          throws ServletException, IOException{
          Connection con = null;
          // Load the Oracle JDBC driver
          try{
               //two versions did not work
               //DriverManager.registerDriver(new oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver);
          DriverManager.registerDriver(new OracleDriver());
     con = DriverManager.getConnection
               ("jdbc:oracle:thin:@micron.1521:MCAP","scott","scott");     
          catch (SQLException e){
          catch (Exception e){
          finally{
               try{
                    if (con != null)
               con.close();
          catch(SQLException ignored){
          }//finally
}

Answer 1

What you should be realizing is that Tomcat doesn't give a hoot about your system CLASSPATH. It totally ignores it. You really shouldn't even have one, because IDEs and app servers don't even take it into account. Get rid of it.
You're making lots of mistakes here:
(1) The Tomcat docs explicitly state that it won't look inside ZIP files. Change it to a JAR file.
(2) You're using JDK 1.4.1 and classes12.zip? You realize, of course, that there's an ojdbc14.jar available for download from Oracle. Go get it.
(3) Put the JDBC JAR in the WEB-INF/lib directory of your Web app. If you don't have one, you're not deploying your Web app properly.
(4) You've got Java code with empty catch blocks? That's one of the most foolish things a person can do. If an exception's thrown you'll never know it. For goodness sake, at least print the stack trace.
(5) Why do you have those Oracle imports? That ties your code to Oracle. The design of the java.sql package lets you use interfaces. Why don't you write JDBC the way it was meant to be written?
(6) Why aren't you setting up a JNDI data source?
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