I resolved my problem: a classic classpath failure.... So this configuration works if you want to use the MS SQL Server 2000 JDBC Driver (Beta):
'maildatabase': # Microsoft JDBC Driver jdbcDriver=com.microsoft.jdbc.sqlserver.SQLServerDriver jdbcURL=jdbc:microsoft:sqlserver://192.168.1.1:1433;DatabaseName=xyz jdbcUsername=abc jdbcPassword=def minconn=1 maxconn=2 Copy the driver packages mssqlserver.jar, msbase.jar and msutil.jar to '/james/lib' and change '/james/bin/run.bat' to (add the jars): @echo off echo Avalon runner set LOCAL_CLASSPATH=Loader.jar;../lib/AvalonAware.jar;../lib/xerces.jar;../lib/mail_1_2.jar;../lib/activation.jar;../lib/msbase.jar;../lib/mssqlserver.jar;../lib/msutil.jar java -cp "%CLASSPATH%;%LOCAL_CLASSPATH%" org.apache.avalon.loader.Main
