Error: SQLServerDriver has been compiled by a more recent version of the Java Runtime

[Zutari GEMC3 Admin]

Good day, I have installed the latest JIRA software server 8.2.2 on a Windows 2016 server. We are using a SQL Server 2017 DB.

I have downloaded the newest MS SQL JDBC drivers from Microsoft and copied them to the WEB-INF/lib folder.

I installed JDK 11 as per documentation and set up the JAVA_HOME environment variable.

When I run \bin\config.bat everything works perfectly and I can successfully configure the DB and the connection test is successful.

However, when I try to open JIRA in browser, it just gives me a blank page, with the URL: http://localhost:8080/secure/errors.jsp .

I found the following error in one of the log files:

2019-06-19 21:59:01,810 JIRA-Bootstrap INFO [c.a.j.config.database.SystemDatabaseConfigurationLoader] Reading database configuration from C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\JIRA-new-home\dbconfig.xml
2019-06-19 21:59:02,060 JIRA-Bootstrap ERROR [c.a.jira.startup.LauncherContextListener] Unable to start JIRA.
java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: com/microsoft/sqlserver/jdbc/SQLServerDriver has been compiled by a more recent version of the Java Runtime (class file version 54.0), this version of the Java Runtime only recognizes class file versions up to 52.0 (unable to load class [com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver])

Would greatly appreciate if someone can point out what I am doing wrong here. What JDBC driver should I be using?

Many thanks.

[Zutari GEMC3 Admin · Accepted solution]

Update: I eventually had to use the "mssql-jdbc-7.2.2.jre8.jar" driver from Microsoft and this did the trick. All working fine now. (I also tried the "mssql-jdbc-7.2.2.jre11.jar" driver but this still gave the error, I had to delete it and use only the jre8 driver, then it worked.)

[Dave Theodore [Coyote Creek Consulting]]

Why not use the driver that is included with Jira?

[Zutari GEMC3 Admin]

It would be great but how do I do that? If I don't provide a driver manually, it gives me an error that says "driver not found". So how do I use the driver included with Jira?