1. what database engine are you using?
2. what
jdbc driver are you using?
3. what ver of the jdk are you using?
Minus this informations. A quick guess would be that you driver, by default, is not supporting SAVEPOINT.
You may have to...
1. turn on an option on you driver...
not always done within
java 2. upgrade you driver
3. apply a patch to your driver
4. upgrade the ver of java you are using
Hope this helps