java.lang.NullPointerException creating org.apache.xerces.parsers .SAXParser

[Eric Jacobson <EJ...@IVW.com>]

I hope I am submitting this to the correct place.  I am using xerces Java
Parser version 1.1.3, JDK 1.2, and Oracle 8i 8.1.6 release 2.  I have
written some Java classes to parse the Open Directory Project rdf dump files
and put the information into Oracle database tables.  Everything works great
when I run my code from command line or JDeveloper.  To maximize performance
I loaded my classes into Oracle so I can run the whole thing from a SQL CALL
statement inside Oracle.  When I try to run the code in Oracle I get a
java.lang.NullPointerException on the line: 
SAXParser parser = new org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser();
I have tried loading the xerces.jar and xml4j.jar into Oracle, but it makes
no difference.  Does anyone have an idea of why this would happen?  Could it
possibly be a bug in the constructor of the SAXParser class, or maybe the
Oracle JVM, or possibly something I'm doing?  All other external classes I
use seem to behave fine.
Thanks for any help or suggestions,

Eric Jacobson
Development Engineer
Internet Venture Works