NoClassDefFound after adding spring-ws dependency

Question

I have a web app that I have to extend with a SOAP client. Since I can't influence the design of the contract (WSDL), I thought about using spring-ws. But as soon as I add the dependency:

<dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.ws</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-ws-core</artifactId>
        <version>2.1.4.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>

I'm getting the following Exception when starting up the application:

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class org.springframework.jdbc.core.StatementCreatorUtils
at org.springframework.context.support.DefaultLifecycleProcessor.doStart(DefaultLifecycleProcessor.java:170)
at org.springframework.context.support.DefaultLifecycleProcessor.access$200(DefaultLifecycleProcessor.java:51)
at org.springframework.context.support.DefaultLifecycleProcessor$LifecycleGroup.start(DefaultLifecycleProcessor.java:339)
at org.springframework.context.support.DefaultLifecycleProcessor.startBeans(DefaultLifecycleProcessor.java:143)
at org.springframework.context.support.DefaultLifecycleProcessor.onRefresh(DefaultLifecycleProcessor.java:108)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.finishRefresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:945)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:482)
at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.configureAndRefreshWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:389)
at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.initWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:294)
at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener.contextInitialized(ContextLoaderListener.java:112)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:4791)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5285)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:901)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:877)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:633)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.manageApp(HostConfig.java:1553)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.modeler.BaseModelMBean.invoke(BaseModelMBean.java:301)
at com.sun.jmx.interceptor.DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.invoke(DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.java:819)
at com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.JmxMBeanServer.invoke(JmxMBeanServer.java:801)
at org.apache.catalina.mbeans.MBeanFactory.createStandardContext(MBeanFactory.java:622)
at org.apache.catalina.mbeans.MBeanFactory.createStandardContext(MBeanFactory.java:569)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.modeler.BaseModelMBean.invoke(BaseModelMBean.java:301)
at com.sun.jmx.interceptor.DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.invoke(DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.java:819)
at com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.JmxMBeanServer.invoke(JmxMBeanServer.java:801)
at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.doOperation(RMIConnectionImpl.java:1487)
at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.access$300(RMIConnectionImpl.java:97)
at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl$PrivilegedOperation.run(RMIConnectionImpl.java:1328)
at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.doPrivilegedOperation(RMIConnectionImpl.java:1420)
at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.invoke(RMIConnectionImpl.java:848)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
at sun.rmi.server.UnicastServerRef.dispatch(UnicastServerRef.java:322)
at sun.rmi.transport.Transport$1.run(Transport.java:177)
at sun.rmi.transport.Transport$1.run(Transport.java:174)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at sun.rmi.transport.Transport.serviceCall(Transport.java:173)
at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport.handleMessages(TCPTransport.java:556)
at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler.run0(TCPTransport.java:811)
at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler.run(TCPTransport.java:670)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:744)

(I did nothing else than modifying the pom. After removing the dependency, all works fine again. I do not see any version conflicts in my WEB-INF/lib...

Answer 1

Try to exclude the transitive spring framework dependencies of the spring-ws-core dependency. But just exclude the dependencies which you already define with another version in your project. For example like this:

<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.ws</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-ws-core</artifactId>
<version>2.1.4.RELEASE</version>
<exclusions>
    <exclusion>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
    <exclusion>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-aop</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
    <exclusion>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-oxm</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
    <exclusion>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
    <exclusion>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
    <exclusion>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-test</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
</exclusions>

This is just a versioning problem of the dependencies in the classpath.