ESQLcompile error: page must catch or throw exception

[MT...@aol.com]

Hi All,

I've got an XSP that uses (or rather, is TRYING and FAILING to use) the ESQL 
logicsheet. When trying to access the page, Cocoon shoots back an error page, 
the stack trace being:

org.apache.cocoon.ProcessingException: Language Exception: 
org.apache.cocoon.components.language.LanguageException: Error compiling 
sample1_xsp.
Line 421, column 58: method valueOf() not found in class java.lang.String
Line 589, column 51: unreported exception: java.sql.SQLException; must be 
caught or declared to be thrown
Line 598, column 27: unreported exception: java.sql.SQLException; must be 
caught or declared to be thrown

Below are the  ESQL tags, plus the namespace declarations. 

<xsp:page language="java"
  xmlns:xsp="http://apache.org/xsp"
    xmlns:esql="http://apache.org/cocoon/SQL/v2">

.... ommitted some stuff for clarity...

<esql:connection>
<esql:pool>users</esql:pool>
<esql:execute-query>select * from users</esql:execute-query>
<esql:results>
<table>
<esql:row-results>
<tr>
<td><esql:get-string column="username"/></td>
<td><esql:get-string column="password"/></td>
</tr>
</esql:row-results>
</table>
</esql:results>
</esql:connection>

...

Any and all solutions most gratefully accepted

Using 
Cocoon 2.0.3
MySQL
JDK 1.3.1
WindowsXP and Unix