NoClassDefFoundError even though Jar is present in classpath

Question

I'm having a weird issue, I am trying to load the class com.cloudera.impala.jdbc41.Driver using Class.forName("com.cloudera.impala.jdbc41.Driver") but it's throwing exception during runtime. Can someone correct me on what wrong I'm doing here?

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class com.cloudera.impala.jdbc41.Driver

Printing the classpath using the following snippet does print the Jar present in the classpath.

System.out.println(System.getProperty("java.class.path"))

Answer 1

The error message "Could not initialize class" likely means that the class was found, but threw an exception during initialization, perhaps in a static block.

This results in the ClassLoader not being able to "find" the class. Confusing, I know. See if there are any static blocks in this class, and if so, set a debugger breakpoint there to see what's going on.