Hi all, I have found a solution to this problem. Its by no means elegant but if you get as desperate as I have got then you may wish to do the same.
It appears that none of the information that you specify in your server.xml gets through to the actual dbcp stuff, don't ask me why. So what I did was crack open the source and hardcode all the details into org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource. Then I rebuilt, redeployed and everything works perfectly. I know this is not scalable or pretty but it is a solution that *will* work. The only question I have left remaining is that is it a security issue having the DB password wrapped up in that jar? (I can't see one) assuming that the server is never compromised. Thanks everybody for all the help given over the past couple of days, it was very much appreciated. regards, Dave
