Hello all,
sorry for the double post - i had never worked with db2 before and really needed some input from the experts up here.
i figured it out on my own through trial and error.
as mentioned in the OP - the original developer had packaged all of the db2 libs in the .war file, then wrapped the war in an ear for deployment to Webshere.
when i was setting this up for jboss - i took the same db2 libs, and placed them in the $JBOSS_HOME/server/default/lib directory.
when i eliminated the db2 libs from the war (by changing the ant script) - this eliminated the error.
thx
mark