Hi,
Glad that it is working for you.
As for adding the dependency to the jar, you can do it but I had been thinking in terms of wars (since that is what I generally work with) so option 1 is actually not the recommended option in this case. However, if you are still interested in how to do it: one way is to use the maven-assembly-plugin:
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>single</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<descriptorRefs>
<descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
</descriptorRefs>
</configuration>
</plugin>
This will create a *-jar-with-dependencies file, that way you could include the dependency jars (exploded) in your jar. I am not entirely familiar with deploying jars so I am not sure if there are any issues with doing this.