Tomcat will not start with "recent version of the Java Runtime" error

Symptom

User sees the below error in 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 54.0), this version of the Java Runtime only recognizes class file versions up to 52.0

Cause

The above error is caused when using a database driver compiled in java 10. 

Action

Delete any database driver that is not compiled in the correct java version.

For example: mssql-jdbc-7.0.0.jre10.jar

Affected Versions

This article applies to Appian 18.3 and later.