account locked error

in oracle, my username is associated to an oracle profile that limits my failed logins to 3 before locking the oracle account.

when i test this through oracle's sql+plus interface, i can in fact attempt 3 failed logins before the oracle account gets locked.

after unlocking the oracle account, i attempt a single login through my java servlet interface. to my surprise, the error thrown reads that my oracle account has been locked.

it seems to me that the login attempt (implied via a Connection's createStatement() call) is repeatedly attempting to login until either a timeout of some kind is reached, or until the "locked account" error is thrown.

i tried writing a debug statement to the application/web log in order to verify that the createStatement() call is only being invoked once, and that seems to be the case so...

i'm confused!!! is it the case that, behind the scenes, createStatement() is repeatedly trying to login until either a timeout value is exceeded or until the oracle "account locked" error is thrown?

thanks in advance for all assistance.

richard