I poked around the log files for a while to see what I could see about the problems launching eXist 2.1 in Tomcat. A guy on the eXist list posted the following in response to me posting the log files showing the errors when I tried to launch exist 2.1 in Tomcat. I haven't yet taken any action on it.

From this [see below] I read that one of exist-db extensions (betterFORM) tries to initialize the SAXON xslt library without success…. a method is missing.

Since the error is not about a missing class, but about a missing java method , I think a different (older or newer) version of saxon.jar is installed.

The solution is….. either to change saxon.jar (endorsed directory or somewhere else) to the version expected by betterFORM (actually bF depends on version 9.2.x.y ; for a newer version the bF code needs to be changed), or to to disable bF in the configuration files [need to check; it is in web.xml I think]

The localhost log includes this:

May 30, 2012 9:20:13 AM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext filterStart
SEVERE: Exception starting filter XFormsFilter
javax.servlet.ServletException:
de.betterform.xml.config.XFormsConfigException:
java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
at de.betterform.agent.web.filter.XFormsFilter.init (http://web.filter.XFormsFilter.init)(XFormsFilter.java:71)
and
Caused by: de.betterform.xml.config.XFormsConfigException:
java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
at de.betterform.xml.config.Config.initSingleton(Config.java:135)
Caused by: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError:
net.sf.saxon.sxpath.IndependentContext.setFunctionLibrary(Lnet/sf/saxon/functions/FunctionLibrary;)V