I have tried to migrate my application container from Tomcat 7 to Tomcat 8, but it seems that Tomcat 8 can't find the JDBC driver. The application uses Spring 4 and Vaadin 7, but this shouldn't cause any problems I think.

When I check the exploded jar I have under `/WEB-INF/lib` the `mysql-connector-java-5.1.29.jar` which is put there using Apache Maven.

I can only make tomcat 8 see the jar just by adding it manually under `tomcat-home/lib` folder, which I don't want to do. I want the flexibility to choose the type of driver and its version from Maven.

I think it may be a timing issue, maybe the jar hasn't been loaded yet and tomcat can't find it. The error I get is `java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver`.

I'd really appreciate and hints and suggestions. If it's a timing issue do you know what I should try?

Thanks