Hibernate 3 with Weblogic results in ClassNotFoundException HqlToken

When using Hibernate 3 with Weblogic Server 10.3, I was getting the following exception when deploying Terracotta h2lc tutorial application.

org.hibernate.QueryException: ClassNotFoundException: org.hibernate.hql.ast.HqlToken [from org.hibernate.tutorial.domain.Person p]
at org.hibernate.hql.ast.HqlLexer.panic(HqlLexer.java:80)
at antlr.CharScanner.setTokenObjectClass(CharScanner.java:340)
at org.hibernate.hql.ast.HqlLexer.setTokenObjectClass(HqlLexer.java:54)
at antlr.CharScanner.(CharScanner.java:51)
at antlr.CharScanner.(CharScanner.java:60)
at org.hibernate.hql.antlr.HqlBaseLexer.(HqlBaseLexer.java:56)
at org.hibernate.hql.antlr.HqlBaseLexer.(HqlBaseLexer.java:53)
at org.hibernate.hql.antlr.HqlBaseLexer.(HqlBaseLexer.java:50)
at org.hibernate.hql.ast.HqlLexer.(HqlLexer.java:49)
at org.hibernate.hql.ast.HqlParser.getInstance(HqlParser.java:67)
at org.hibernate.hql.ast.QueryTranslatorImpl.parse(QueryTranslatorImpl.java:268)
at org.hibernate.hql.ast.QueryTranslatorImpl.doCompile(QueryTranslatorImpl.java:182)
at org.hibernate.hql.ast.QueryTranslatorImpl.compile(QueryTranslatorImpl.java:136)
at org.hibernate.engine.query.HQLQueryPlan.(HQLQueryPlan.java:101)
at org.hibernate.engine.query.HQLQueryPlan.(HQLQueryPlan.java:80)
at org.hibernate.engine.query.QueryPlanCache.getHQLQueryPlan(QueryPlanCache.java:94)
at org.hibernate.impl.AbstractSessionImpl.getHQLQueryPlan(AbstractSessionImpl.java:156)
at org.hibernate.impl.AbstractSessionImpl.createQuery(AbstractSessionImpl.java:135)
at org.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.createQuery(SessionImpl.java:1651)
at org.hibernate.tutorial.web.EventManagerServlet.init(EventManagerServlet.java:28)
at javax.servlet.GenericServlet.init(GenericServlet.java:241)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper$ServletInitAction.run(StubSecurityHelper.java:283)
at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:321)
at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(Unknown Source)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper.createServlet(StubSecurityHelper.java:64)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubLifecycleHelper.createOneInstance(StubLifecycleHelper.java:58)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubLifecycleHelper.(StubLifecycleHelper.java:48)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.prepareServlet(ServletStubImpl.java:521)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.execute(ServletStubImpl.java:235)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.TailFilter.doFilter(TailFilter.java:26)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:42)
at org.hibernate.tutorial.web.SessionInterceptor.doFilter(SessionInterceptor.java:41)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:42)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext$ServletInvocationAction.run(WebAppServletContext.java:3496)
at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:321)
at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(Unknown Source)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.securedExecute(WebAppServletContext.java:2180)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.execute(WebAppServletContext.java:2086)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletRequestImpl.run(ServletRequestImpl.java:1406)
at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:201)
at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:173)

This seems to be a known issue https://www.hibernate.org/250.html#A25

Solution:

For WAR files, Add WEB-INF/weblogic.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE weblogic-web-app PUBLIC "-//BEA Systems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 8.1//EN"
                               "http://www.bea.com/servers/wls810/dtd/weblogic810-web-jar.dtd">
<weblogic-web-app>
  <container-descriptor>
    <prefer-web-inf-classes>true</prefer-web-inf-classes>
  </container-descriptor>
</weblogic-web-app>

Note: All the dependencies should be in the WAR
Warning: The above code can lead you to some ClassCastExceptions which is due to conflicting classes in WEB-INF/lib and system libs.

For me, it threw

java.lang.ClassCastException: weblogic.xml.jaxp.RegistryXMLReader cannot be cast to org.xml.sax.XMLReader  
at org.xml.sax.helpers.XMLReaderFactory.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at org.xml.sax.helpers.XMLReaderFactory.createXMLReader(Unknown Source)
at org.dom4j.io.SAXHelper.createXMLReader(SAXHelper.java:83)
at org.dom4j.io.SAXReader.createXMLReader(SAXReader.java:894)
at org.dom4j.io.SAXReader.getXMLReader(SAXReader.java:715)

so needed to remove xml-apis jar from WEB-INF/lib.

The above solution is for Web Archives only. For other applications, we might need to add the following code. Didnt tested this though :)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<weblogic-application>
 <prefer-application-packages>
     <package-name>antlr.*</package-name>
 </prefer-application-packages>
</weblogic-application>