You are currently reviewing an older revision of this page.

DRAFT KB-XXXX Tomcat will not 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: com/microsoft/sqlserver/jdbc/SQLServerDriver 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

Cause

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

Action

Delete 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: February 2020