I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, so if not, please point me to the right place. I have just tried updating the mariadb java connector from 2.5.4 to 2.6.1 and I get a Null pointer exception trying to open a connection. I am using the DriverManager.getConnection call which works with 2.5.4, but just swapping the jar file to 2.6.1 causes an exception (2.6.0 also has the problem). The exception traceback is shown below. I am using MariaDB 10.4.12 on Windows Am I doing something wrong or is this a problem with 2.6. Thanks for any help Andy Ling Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError at org.mariadb.jdbc.internal.com.send.SendHandshakeResponsePacket.writeConnectAttributes(SendHandshakeResponsePacket.java:202) at org.mariadb.jdbc.internal.com.send.SendHandshakeResponsePacket.send(SendHandshakeResponsePacket.java:187) at org.mariadb.jdbc.internal.protocol.AbstractConnectProtocol.authenticationHandler(AbstractConnectProtocol.java:684) at org.mariadb.jdbc.internal.protocol.AbstractConnectProtocol.createConnection(AbstractConnectProtocol.java:546) at org.mariadb.jdbc.internal.protocol.AbstractConnectProtocol.connectWithoutProxy(AbstractConnectProtocol.java:1367) at org.mariadb.jdbc.internal.util.Utils.retrieveProxy(Utils.java:635) at org.mariadb.jdbc.MariaDbConnection.newConnection(MariaDbConnection.java:150) at org.mariadb.jdbc.Driver.connect(Driver.java:89) at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:664) at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:270) at com.quantel.QuentinManager.ds.mysql.MySQLBootStrap.getInitialConnection(MySQLBootStrap.java:48) at com.quantel.QuentinManager.DBCluster.getInitialConnection(DBCluster.java:128) at com.quantel.QuentinManager.QuentinManager.start(QuentinManager.java:329) at com.quantel.QuentinManager.QuentinManager.main(QuentinManager.java:630) Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException at org.mariadb.jdbc.internal.util.constant.Version.<clinit>(Version.java:84) ... 14 more