KB-2116 Tomcat fails to start with "recent version of the Java Runtime" error

Symptoms

The application server fails to start. The below error is thrown in the application server log:

YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.sss SEVERE [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal ContainerBase.addChild: start: org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [StandardEngine[Catalina].StandardHost[localhost].StandardContext[/suite]] ... 

Caused by: java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: X has been compiled by a more recent version of the Java Runtime (class file version XX.0), this version of the Java Runtime only recognizes class file versions up to XX.0

at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.PooledConnection.connectUsingDriver(PooledConnection.java:280)

Cause

This issue occurs when using a database driver compiled with Java 9 or above. 

Action

Replace any database driver that is not compiled with the correct Java version and start the application server. The drivers are located in the <APPIAN_HOME>tomcat/apache-tomcat/lib directory.

Affected Versions

This article applies to Appian 18.3 and later.

Last Reviewed: May 2020