OK. I take it back. Last night it was getting to where the connection was actually connecting then failing, so I assumed that today it would work as it did make a network connection to know our server was shutting down (database server that is). The Oracle listener still runs though no shared memory for the database is running on the server while it is backed up, so the end result should be a failure and an error message from Oracle. However, today it doesn't work, and to beat it all 2.1 can't be fixed by setting the property in domain.xml. It seems to just ignore it. Startup time seemed just as fast. 9.1u2 worked well with the property being set. So, it seems later builds are actually worse off. At least I can change domain.xml in 9.1u2 and get it working.
[Message sent by forum member 'wadechandler' (wadechandler)]
http://forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=324619