java.lang.IncompatibleClassChangeError

Problem

Received the following stacktrace from Websphere7.

[7/06/11 15:34:25:185 EST] 00000011 webapp        E com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebApp logServletError SRVE0293E: [Servlet Error]-[/WEB-INF/views/500.jsp]: java.lang.IncompatibleClassChangeError
        at org.apache.taglibs.standard.tlv.JstlCoreTLV$Handler.startElement(JstlCoreTLV.java:250)
        at org.apache.xerces.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.startElement(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.scanStartElement(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl$NSContentDispatcher.scanRootElementHook(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDispatcher.dispatch(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XMLParser.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl.parse(Unknown Source)
        at javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
        at org.apache.taglibs.standard.tlv.JstlBaseTLV.validate(JstlBaseTLV.java:156)
        at org.apache.taglibs.standard.tlv.JstlCoreTLV.validate(JstlCoreTLV.java:96)

Solution

Make sure the following (latest if possible) xml apis are used (and excluded from other dependencies).

        <dependency>
            <groupId>xalan</groupId>
            <artifactId>xalan</artifactId>
            <version>2.7.1</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>xerces</groupId>
            <artifactId>xercesImpl</artifactId>
            <version>2.9.1</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>xerces</groupId>
            <artifactId>xmlParserAPIs</artifactId>
            <version>2.6.2</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>xml-apis</groupId>
            <artifactId>xml-apis</artifactId>
            <version>1.3.04</version>
        </dependency>

See: http://maven.40175.n5.nabble.com/m2-IncompatibleClassChangeError-using-maven-surefire-plugin-2-1-3-td61403.html