I copied TriggerSample.java to this directory. Then: javac -cp h2-1.3.168.jar TriggerSample.java creates TriggerSample$MyTrigger.class ... and ... TriggerSample.class Then: java TriggerSample says: Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: TriggerSample (wrong name: org/h2/samples/TriggerSample) at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method) at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClassCond(ClassLoader.java:631) at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:615) at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:141) at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:283) at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(URLClassLoader.java:58) at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:197) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306) at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247) also no go with: java org.h2.samples.TriggerSample java org/h2/samples/TriggerSample How exactly to run that example from the command line?