While changing the datasource configuration in Rational Application Developer 6.0, I across the following error.

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: resolve against non-hierarchical or relative base

This turned out to be a very nasty problem. I first tried removing the datasource configuration and reconfiguring it. When that didn’t work tried deleting the server configuration. No luck!

On googling, I came across this solution.
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21218587

Solution
Open the resources.xml and find:
<cmpDatasource href=”tempworkarea.xmi#DataSource_1125683336050″ mce_href=”tempworkarea.xmi#DataSource_1125683336050″/>

The only way to fix this error is to manually edit the resources.xml. On searching under runtimes folder, I came across multiple resources.xml files. Edited all of them and removed cmpDataSource references completely.

The steps are,

1. Shutdown RAD.
2. Remove cmpDataSource entries completely from resource.xml files under “runtimes” folder.
3. Start RAD and reconfigure datasources.

It worked!