Scenario : Your Java program, either standalone or Java web application is trying to connect to Oracle database using type 4 JDBC thin driver "oracle.jdbc.driver.oracledriver", JVM is not able to find this class at runtime. This JAR comes in ojdbc6.jar or ojdbc6_g.jar which is most probably not available in classpath.

Cause : When you connect to Oracle database from Java program, your program loads the implementation of Driver interface provided by the database vendor using class.forName() method, which throws ClassNotFoundException when driver class is not found in classpath. In case of Oracle the driver implementation is oracle.jdbc.driver.oracledriver and "java.lang.classnotfoundexception oracle.jdbc.driver.oracledriver" error indicate that this class is  not available in classpath. Since this class is bundled into ojdbc6.jar, its usually the case of this JAR not present in Classpath