anonymous wrote : | The situation leading to this error was restart of the db server, so I have a pool full of dead connections. | Your *-ds.xml file does not include a valid connection checker element which means that potentially invalid connections can remain in the pool for use. Take a look at http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=JBossJCAPooling On how to configure this. anonymous wrote : | I gather from what you're saying that I can't flush the pool from this particular exception-handling path | I think we are talking about two different things. Connection validation occurs at the pool level prior to a client being given a connection. If your *-ds.xml file includes this, it will be invoked. The ExceptionSorter path is used to evaluate exceptions that occur on the connection while in use. For XA related errors currently there is no way to intercept this path. There is no reason why this could not be added. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4034128#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...