ContextLoader: Context initialization failed

Question

I'm trying to track down the reason why a portion of my application stopped working all of a sudden. I'm running Spring 1 with Weblogic 8.1.4.0 and Hibernate. The report generator is the part that has failed, first on our production server, then on the dev and qa servers on Friday while I was experimenting. I made no changes to the code, but I'm now getting a Missing Data Source exception on the compile statement of a mapping query. The only thing that changed was a couple of records in the database, but they were fairly simple changes that I doubt would have had an impact. I also got the following error from Friday around the time that the two development apps may have failed:

Here is the error in the logs from development server:

04-06 14:31:34 ERROR [main] org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader: Context initialization failed
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'myDataSource' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]: Initialization of bean failed; nested exception is javax.naming.LinkException: 

And there is a similar one about 10 minutes later from when I deployed to the QA server.

It is referring to a datasource and connection pool defined in WebLogic. I have checked and tested the connection, and there doesn't seem to be any problems with it.

What could possibly be going on that would have caused this? I even reverted back to a build from last week to make sure it was not a code change, but the same datasource required exception occurs:

04-07 16:15:04 DEBUG [ExecuteThread: '14' for queue: 'default'] org.eei.survey.data.RegionDataDAO$NERCRegionMappingQuery: RdbmsOperation with SQL [{call prc_NERCRegions_get}] compiled
04-07 16:15:04 ERROR [ExecuteThread: '14' for queue: 'default'] error.jsp: Error page displayed to user due to unhandled exception
org.springframework.dao.InvalidDataAccessApiUsageException: dataSource is required
    at org.springframework.jdbc.object.RdbmsOperation.compile(RdbmsOperation.java:300)
    at org.eei.survey.data.ReportDAO$NCRMappingQuery.<init>(ReportDAO.java:535)
    at org.eei.survey.data.ReportDAO.executePrcNCR(ReportDAO.java:548)
    at org.eei.survey.data.ReportDAO.getNCR(ReportDAO.java:59)
    at jsp_servlet._reliability._charts.__barncr._jspService(__barncr.java:235)

Any help would be appreciated.

UPDATE: Here is the full stacktrace of the error:

04-08 14:56:19 WARN  [ExecuteThread: '14' for queue: 'default'] org.apache.shale.faces.ShaleViewHandler: No ViewController for viewId /reliability/support/reportgen.faces found under name reliability$support$reportgen
04-08 14:56:19 DEBUG [ExecuteThread: '14' for queue: 'default'] org.eei.survey.data.ReportDAO: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: No DataSource specified
04-08 14:56:19 ERROR [ExecuteThread: '14' for queue: 'default'] error.jsp: Error page displayed to user due to unhandled exception
java.lang.NullPointerException
    at jsp_servlet._reliability._support.__reportgen._jspService(__reportgen.java:156)
    at weblogic.servlet.jsp.JspBase.service(JspBase.java:33)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl$ServletInvocationAction.run(ServletStubImpl.java:1006)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.invokeServlet(ServletStubImpl.java:419)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.invokeServlet(ServletStubImpl.java:315)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.RequestDispatcherImpl.forward(RequestDispatcherImpl.java:322)
    at com.sun.faces.context.ExternalContextImpl.dispatch(ExternalContextImpl.java:322)
    at com.sun.faces.application.ViewHandlerImpl.renderView(ViewHandlerImpl.java:130)
    at org.apache.shale.faces.ShaleViewHandler.renderView(ShaleViewHandler.java:142)
    at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.RenderResponsePhase.execute(RenderResponsePhase.java:87)
    at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.phase(LifecycleImpl.java:200)
    at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.render(LifecycleImpl.java:117)
    at javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:198)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl$ServletInvocationAction.run(ServletStubImpl.java:1006)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.invokeServlet(ServletStubImpl.java:419)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.TailFilter.doFilter(TailFilter.java:28)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:27)
    at org.apache.shale.faces.InvokeCommand.execute(InvokeCommand.java:40)
    at org.apache.commons.chain.impl.ChainBase.execute(ChainBase.java:166)
    at org.apache.shale.faces.ShaleApplicationFilter.doFilter(ShaleApplicationFilter.java:218)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:27)
    at org.eei.survey.web.UserFilter.doFilterInternal(UserFilter.java:30)
    at org.springframework.web.filter.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:76)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:27)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext$ServletInvocationAction.run(WebAppServletContext.java:6724)
    at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:321)
    at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(SecurityManager.java:121)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.invokeServlet(WebAppServletContext.java:3764)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletRequestImpl.execute(ServletRequestImpl.java:2644)
    at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:219)
    at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:178)

Answer 1

You are having a problem with the jdni resolution of your datasource. Take a look at the weblogic jdni pool and make usre that you are using the correct name for jdni. java:comp/env/jdbc/reliabilityDS is not working.

This may help:

http://books.google.com/books?id=TiAKHpPHpHIC&pg=PA159&lpg=PA159&dq=weblogic+8.1+jndi+tree&source=bl&ots=cjKNXJZl4o&sig=FHs0YL6hqslNOYjuWpjyRTlCpYY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=veWBT5aVNoTMtgeJ8fC9Bg&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=weblogic%208.1%20jndi%20tree&f=false

This also

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E13222_01/wls/docs81/jndi/jndi.html

This as well

Tomcat vs Weblogic JNDI Lookup

Answer 2

I still don't have a solid answer for why this occurred, but I did figure out how to fix it for now. I basically had to stop my deployed application, then reset the connection pool, then restart again. I would have assumed that restarting the entire server would have accomplished the same thing, but I tried that several times with no results. I don't have hours to track down the source of the problem currently, but if anyone gets into this situation you at least have a quick fix.