Thanks for the replies. I'm at work now and don't have access to the postings sent earlier.
I created a new jar that included my classes and the persistence.xml file. I placed it in my lib directory. No difference. I'm working in part off code/requirements I didn't write. One wrinkle is that my boss told me to use JPA persistence. He's on vacation now. This is the code to get a session: emf = Persistence.createEntityManagerFactory(Constants.PERSISTENCE); em = emf.createEntityManager(); Given that it is the epicenter of my problem, perhaps I should mention it! I removed the persistence.xml file completely and verified the error (javax.persistence.PersistenceException: No Persistence provider for EntityManager named xyzzy) is generated by a missing persistence.xml file.
