OK, I figured it out. The error wasn't with the way I was calling the jdbc driver as I had suspected but with the way I was specifiying the connection url. D'oh... OK, I feel stupid now. If it's any defense the example programs I downloaded from the net were wrong too... ;-) Btw, I tried removing the .newInstance() from the end of the Class.forName("blah") call and it still worked, another thing I was doing different than your code. Maybe Class.forName() instantiates a new object from the called class automagically? *shrug* Thank you very much for your help! Mike *****************Michael Orion Jackson****************** ***********TAMS Class of 96/UT Class of 200?************ *********************Random Quote:********************** * I like things beginning with the letter C! * *(Chem, CS, Christy Banta, C/C++, CGI.pm, Cooking, etc)* ******************************************************** --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Send administrative requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]