java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError on DriverManager.getConnection

[Andy Ford]

I've just installed mysql-connector-java-3.1.12-bin.jar in my classpath and tried to connect to my local mySQL DB.

Compiling the following works fine, but running it and connecting to mySQL fails with ...
--------------------------
package ps;
import java.sql.*;

public class DataCollector {

private String database = "oui";
private String user = "user";
private String passwd = "password";
private int portNum = 3306;

public DataCollector () {
}

public void getData() {
Statement stmt = null;
Connection conn = null;
ResultSet rs = null;

try {

Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance();
conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://127.0.0.1/" + database + "?port=" + portNum + "&user=" + user + "&password=" + passwd + "&autoReconnect=false");
etc
etc

... fails with the following error...

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
at com.mysql.jdbc.Connection.<init>(Connection.java:1175)
at com.mysql.jdbc.NonRegisteringDriver.connect(NonRegisteringDriver.java:266)
at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:525)
at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:193)
at ps.DataCollector.getData(DataCollector.java:46)
at ps.PacketSchedular.main(PacketSchedular.java:30)
Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to initialize character set mapping tables
at com.mysql.jdbc.CharsetMapping.<clinit>(CharsetMapping.java:73)
... 6 more

I'm not sure where to look to fix this.

I'm running
Solaris 2.8
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_06-b05)

Any suggestions

Thanks