We had what I consider to be an extremely odd occurrence this morning. A
class that has not been changed for over 2 years appears to have failed to
run its static initializer code.

Because the code in question accesses another system, I track execution
times via logging messages. This class is loaded every morning. I've noted
that I have the messages logged showing that the static initializer code
*has* executed every morning for as far back as I have logs, back to March
18, 2005.

For some very odd reason, the code seems not to have executed this morning.
When I shut down the JVM and restarted it, the code executed as expected.

So, my question is whether anyone has encountered a situation in which a
static initializer simply failed to execute when there was no known
modifications to code or environment?

I'm completely befuddled by this one. Technically, the only evidence I have
is that no log entries were made, but I have no more reason to doubt the
logging mechanism that I do the static initializer code itself.

Here is the static initializer code. I haven't provided a complete, working
example because this is not a reproducible problem - it seems to be a
complete anomaly:

 static
 {
   try
   {
     TimingReporter resolveDuration = new TimingReporter("Resolve to file "
+ FILE_NAME);
     library =
LibraryListManager.getInstance().resolveLibraryName(FILE_NAME,
OBJECT_TYPE).trim();
     resolveDuration.report();
   } catch (Exception e)
   {
     e.printStackTrace();
   }
 }

I would expect one of two things to happen:

1) the library variable would be populated and the resolveDuration.report()
call would produce a log entry telling me how long the operation took to
complete.
2) there was an error (exception) in the resolveLibraryName() method and I
would get a stacktrace printed.

Neither of those happened, so I'm also investigating whether there was some
odd occurence within resolveLibraryName. However, since I only see two paths
through this static initializer and since both of those paths should have
produced some observable output (either a log message or a printed
stacktrace), I question whether the static initializer ran at all.

All thoughts appreciated.