[Solved] JDBC connections suddenly stopped working

[the ber]

I have several Linux systems running LibreOffice. For about a year I have been connecting to MariaDB databases without problem using the JDBC connector(s). Since a week or so none of them can connect. When I enter my password, the following error - or something similar - shows up:

The driver class 'com.mariadb.jdbc.Driver' could not be loaded. /build/libreoffice-fresh/src/libreoffice-7.0.4.2/connectivity/source/drivers/jdbc/JConnection.cxx:687

The MariaDB connectors are all still in place in the following folder: /usr/share/java. I tried adding newer and older versions of the connectors, but that didn't help.

The LibreOffice versions used are 6.4, 7.0, and even 7.1 development version. I have tried with the versions from the repositories, and also with AppImage versions.

I think the problem is probably not due to some crazy Linux update, since one of my versions is OpenSuse Leap 15.2, which is stable and has very few updates.

I can connect to the databases using the terminal, or MySQL Workbench, with no problem. But I really want Base for the forms, and the reports.

Can anyone suggest more things to try?

[the ber]

I got it working, by trying out some advice from Villeroy in this older post:
viewtopic.php?f=40&t=101625#p490324
That post was directed to a problem that I was having with direct connections, but it had information about jdbc connections as well. Following through on this, I found and installed this driver:
mysql-connector-java-8.0.20.jar.
Then I directed LibreOffice to use this driver, and the jdbc connection started to work again. Bingo.

It would be kind of nice to know why the mariadb connectors suddenly stopped working, but I don't have to know everything.
Thank you, Villeroy!