Illegalargumentexception when deploying Spring Boot application in Weblogic

Question

I am not being able to successfully deploy my Spring boot 2-based application to a server running Oracle Weblogic 12.1.3 due to this error:

weblogic.application.ModuleException: null
null
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppModule.createModuleException(WebAppModule.java:1824)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppModule.init(WebAppModule.java:270)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppModule.init(WebAppModule.java:682)
        at weblogic.application.internal.flow.ScopedModuleDriver.init(ScopedModuleDriver.java:162)
        at weblogic.application.internal.ExtensibleModuleWrapper.init(ExtensibleModuleWrapper.java:98)
        Truncated. see log file for complete stacktrace
Caused By: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException
        at com.bea.objectweb.asm.ClassReader.<init>(Unknown Source)
        at com.bea.objectweb.asm.ClassReader.<init>(Unknown Source)
        at weblogic.application.utils.annotation.ClassInfoImpl.<init>(ClassInfoImpl.java:41)
        at weblogic.application.utils.annotation.ClassfinderClassInfos.polulateOneClassInfo(ClassfinderClassInfos.java:240)
        at weblogic.application.utils.annotation.ClassfinderClassInfos.populateClassInfos(ClassfinderClassInfos.java:193)
        at weblogic.application.utils.annotation.ClassfinderClassInfos.<init>(ClassfinderClassInfos.java:44)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.War.initializeClassInfosIfNecessary(War.java:446)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.War.getAnnotatedClasses(War.java:376)
        at weblogic.servlet.utils.WarUtils.isJsfApplication(WarUtils.java:258)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppModule.detectJsfApplication(WebAppModule.java:277)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppModule.init(WebAppModule.java:262)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppModule.init(WebAppModule.java:682)
        at weblogic.application.internal.flow.ScopedModuleDriver.init(ScopedModuleDriver.java:162)
        at weblogic.application.internal.ExtensibleModuleWrapper.init(ExtensibleModuleWrapper.java:98)
        at weblogic.application.internal.flow.ModuleListenerInvoker.init(ModuleListenerInvoker.java:84)
        at weblogic.application.internal.flow.InitModulesFlow.initModule(InitModulesFlow.java:288)
        at weblogic.application.internal.flow.InitModulesFlow.initModules(InitModulesFlow.java:301)
        at weblogic.application.internal.flow.InitModulesFlow.prepare(InitModulesFlow.java:329)
        at weblogic.application.internal.BaseDeployment$1.next(BaseDeployment.java:706)
        at weblogic.application.utils.StateMachineDriver.nextState(StateMachineDriver.java:42)
        at weblogic.application.internal.BaseDeployment.prepare(BaseDeployment.java:237)
        at weblogic.application.internal.SingleModuleDeployment.prepare(SingleModuleDeployment.java:48)
        at weblogic.application.internal.DeploymentStateChecker.prepare(DeploymentStateChecker.java:158)
        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.AppContainerInvoker.prepare(AppContainerInvoker.java:61)
        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.operations.ActivateOperation.createAndPrepareContainer(ActivateOperation.java:208)
        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.operations.ActivateOperation.doPrepare(ActivateOperation.java:98)
        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.operations.AbstractOperation.prepare(AbstractOperation.java:233)
        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.DeploymentManager.handleDeploymentPrepare(DeploymentManager.java:749)
        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.DeploymentManager.prepareDeploymentList(DeploymentManager.java:1238)
        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.DeploymentManager.handlePrepare(DeploymentManager.java:252)
        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.DeploymentServiceDispatcher.prepare(DeploymentServiceDispatcher.java:172)
        at weblogic.deploy.service.internal.targetserver.DeploymentReceiverCallbackDeliverer.doPrepareCallback(DeploymentReceiverCallbackDeliverer.java:171)
        at weblogic.deploy.service.internal.targetserver.DeploymentReceiverCallbackDeliverer.access$000(DeploymentReceiverCallbackDeliverer.java:13)
        at weblogic.deploy.service.internal.targetserver.DeploymentReceiverCallbackDeliverer$1.run(DeploymentReceiverCallbackDeliverer.java:46)
        at weblogic.work.SelfTuningWorkManagerImpl$WorkAdapterImpl.run(SelfTuningWorkManagerImpl.java:548)
        at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:311)
        at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:263)

At first I thought it might be due to the incompatibility of Java versions between the server and my development machine (as suggested in this question), however both are running the JDK 8.

I also found this Issue about cannot deploy a Log4j 2.9.x application to Weblogic due to an error with.objectweb.asm.Classreader but the only references my project contains to Log4j are to version 2.1.0 so I don’t think it applies.

Considering that although my application does not run on Weblogic the war is successfully created and the application runs locally, some idea of what might be?

---

Contents of pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>XXX</groupId>
    <artifactId>XXX</artifactId>
    <version>x.x.x</version>
    <packaging>war</packaging>

    <name>XXX</name>
    <description>XXX</description>

    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.0.1.RELEASE</version>
        <relativePath /> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>

    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
            <exclusions>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>com.vaadin.external.google</groupId>
                    <artifactId>android-json</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-security-core</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-security-config</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-security-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-dbcp2</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.xerial</groupId>
            <artifactId>sqlite-jdbc</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.json</groupId>
            <artifactId>json</artifactId>
            <version>20180130</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-jdbc</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>

    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>