If you're building your application as a
J2EE web application (i.e. a WAR file or directory structure with the WEB-INF/web.xml deployment descriptor), a good place to put your database drivers is in the WEB-INF/lib/ directory. Simply stick your .JAR file in here and the classes will be automatically loaded for you by the web container, therefore eliminating the need to set the CLASSPATH before starting the server.
Hope that helps
Simon