I'm developing an eclipse plugin and it uses hibernate (v 3.1.3)
I'm using MySQL v5

I'm getting an error stating java.sql.SQLException: No suitable driver
although I do have mysql-connector-java-3.1.12-bin.jar in my jre/lib/ext

Since a plugin's runtime environment is different does it require the jar file to be placed in a different place or specified elsewhere?

The exact error is:
java.sql.SQLException: No suitable driver
at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(Unknown Source)
at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(Unknown Source)
at org.hibernate.connection.DriverManagerConnectionProvider.getConnection(DriverManagerConnectionProvider.java:110)
at org.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory.buildSettings(SettingsFactory.java:72)
at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.buildSettings(Configuration.java:1881)
at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.buildSessionFactory(Configuration.java:1174)
at bizobjects.base._BaseRootDAO.initialize(_BaseRootDAO.java:54)
at bizobjects.base._BaseRootDAO.initialize(_BaseRootDAO.java:41)
at bizobjects.base._BaseRootDAO.initialize(_BaseRootDAO.java:32)
at treeAllo.popup.actions.SomeAction.run(SomeAction.java:32)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.PluginAction.runWithEvent(PluginAction.java:246)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.ActionContributionItem.handleWidgetSelection(ActionContributionItem.java:538)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.ActionContributionItem.access$2(ActionContributionItem.java:488)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.ActionContributionItem$5.handleEvent(ActionContributionItem.java:400)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.EventTable.sendEvent(EventTable.java:66)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Widget.java:843)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.runDeferredEvents(Display.java:3125)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.readAndDispatch(Display.java:2758)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.Workbench.runEventLoop(Workbench.java:1699)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.Workbench.runUI(Workbench.java:1663)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.Workbench.createAndRunWorkbench(Workbench.java:367)
at org.eclipse.ui.PlatformUI.createAndRunWorkbench(PlatformUI.java:143)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.ide.IDEApplication.run(IDEApplication.java:103)
at org.eclipse.core.internal.runtime.PlatformActivator$1.run(PlatformActivator.java:226)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:376)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:163)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.invokeFramework(Main.java:334)
at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.basicRun(Main.java:278)
at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.run(Main.java:973)
at org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main.main(Main.java:948)
14:50:47,193 WARN Configurator:126 - No configuration found. Configuring ehcache from ehcache-failsafe.xml found in the classpath: bundleresource://237/ehcache-failsafe.xml
Unhandled event loop exception
Reason:
could not instantiate id generator


Thanks in advance.

-Vivek

Afaik, you have to configure all jars that your plugin uses in plugin.xml. I'm not sure if there's a requirement that they be in the plugin directory tree, but I've never seen a plugin reference anything outside that tree. It may be a security thing.

You need the <runtime> attribute, then configure <library name="yourjdbcjar.jar"/> or whatever. Almost all 3rd-party eclipse plugins use this, you should already have examples for this in your eclipse/plugin directory.