title: Websphere and Hibernate: NoClassDefFoundError
body: <p>A developer solved an issue with Hibernate 3 and WAS 7.5, wherein evidently WAS uses an old version of the hibernate jpa bridge.  The developer put the jpa 2.0 jar in the ext folder to get WAS to load it in the bootstrap classloader, and so use the more recent version.  This in fact works, but "feels wrong".</p>
  
  <p>We recently upgraded to Hibernate 4 on some apps and did the same with 2.1.  Now we are migrating to WAS 8.5.5, and it evidently needs the same treatment.  It seems to have updated to use 2.0 because those apps run, but the Hibernate 4 apps need 2.1, and the ext folder trick suddenly stopped working.</p>
  
  <p>So this is a perfect time to revisit this and ask, what is the "right" way to solve this problem?  Or, if you don't know the "right" way, how can I do the equivalent of the ext folder trick in WAS 8.5.5?  </p>
  
  <p>In case you're curious, the exact error is:</p>
  
  <p>java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax.persistence.AttributeConverter</p>