Corporate Info  |  News  |  Solutions  |  Products  |  Partners  |  Services  |  Events  |  Download  |  How To Buy
	e-docs   |   Site Map   |   Search   |   Contact   |   Glossary   |   WebLogic Server Documentation
Programming WebLogic JDBC:   Previous topic   |   Next topic   |   Contents

This topic discusses these sections regarding third-party JDBC drivers:

• Overview of Third-Party JDBC Drivers

• Using the Third-Party Drivers

• Setting the Environment for Your Third-Party Driver

• Getting a Connection with Your Third-Party Driver

Overview of Third-Party JDBC Drivers

WebLogic Server works with third-party JDBC drivers that offer the following functionality:

• Are thread-safe

• Are EJB accessible; can implement transaction calls in JDBC

In addition, WebLogic Server multitier drivers only support the JDBC API and do not support additional functionality. For example, calls to proprietary Oracle methods are not currently supported, but are planned in a future release.

This section describes how to set up and use the following third-party two-tier, Type 4 drivers with WebLogic Server:

• Oracle Thin Driver 816

• Sybase jConnect Driver

These drivers are bundled with your WebLogic Server distribution; the weblogic.jar file contains the Oracle Thin Driver and Sybase jConnect classes. If you want to use the Oracle Thin Driver 817, it is available as a download from Oracle. Additional information about these Oracle and Sybase drivers is available at their respective Web sites.

Please be aware of the following limitations:

• You cannot use Batch updates (addBatch()) with the callableStatement or preparedStatement SQL statements when using the RMI driver in conjunction with 2-Tier drivers.

• You cannot use BLOBs and CLOBs when using the RMI driver in conjunction with 2-Tier drivers. BLOBs and CLOBs are not serializable and, therefore, are not supported with the JDBC RMI Driver used with WebLogic 6.0.

Setting the Environment for Your Third-Party Driver

The following topics describe how to set your CLASSPATH for Windows NT and Unix for the Oracle Thin Driver and Sybase jConnect Driver.

Set your CLASSPATH, pre-pending the weblogic.jar file, as follows:

set CLASSPATH=c:\bea\weblogic6.0\lib\weblogic.jar;%CLASSPATH%

Where c:\bea\weblogic6.0 is the directory where you installed WebLogic Server.

Set your CLASSPATH, pre-pending the weblogic.jar file, as follows:

export CLASSPATH=/bea/weblogic6.0/lib/weblogic.jar;$CLASSPATH

Where /bea/weblogic6.0 is the directory where you installed WebLogic Server.

The following topics describe two ways to get a connection using a third-party, Type 4 driver, such as the Oracle Thin Driver and Sybase jConnect Driver. BEA recommends you use connection pools, data sources, and JNDI Lookup to establish your connection. As an alternative, you can get a simple connection directly between the Java client and the database.

First, you create the connection pool and data source using the Administration Console, then establish the connection using a JNDI Lookup.

See Managing JDBC Connectivity in the Administration Guide for information on how to use the Administration Console to:

• Create a JDBC Connection Pool

• Create a JDBC DataSource

Using a JNDI Lookup to Obtain the Connection

To access the driver using JNDI, obtain a Context from the JNDI tree by providing the URL of your server, and then use that context object to perform a lookup using the DataSource Name.

For example, to access a DataSource called "myDataSource" that is defined in Administration Console:

Context ctx = null;
  Hashtable ht = new Hashtable();
  ht.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY,
         "weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactory");
  ht.put(Context.PROVIDER_URL,
         "t3://hostname:port");

  try {
    ctx = new InitialContext(ht);
    javax.sql.DataSource ds 
      = (javax.sql.DataSource) ctx.lookup ("myDataSource");
   java.sql.Connection conn = ds.getConnection();

   // You can now use the conn object to create 
   //  a Statement object to execute
   //  SQL statements and process result sets:

Statement stmt = conn.createStatement();
stmt.execute("select * from someTable");
ResultSet rs = stmt.getResultSet(); 

   // Do not forget to close the statement and connection objects
   // when you are finished:

   stmt.close();
   conn.close();  
 }
  catch (NamingException e) {
    // a failure occurred
  }
  finally {
    try {ctx.close();}
    catch (Exception e) {
      // a failure occurred
    }
  }

(Where hostname is the name of the machine running your WebLogic Server and port is the port number where that machine is listening for connection requests.)

In this example a Hashtable object is used to pass the parameters required for the JNDI lookup. There are other ways to perform a JNDI look up. For more information, see Programming WebLogic JNDI .

Notice that the JNDI lookup is wrapped in a try/catch block in order to catch a failed look up and also that the context is closed in a finally block.

This simple example shows you how to establish a connection directly between the java client and the database.

Using the Administration Console, do the following:

• Create the Connection Pool

Setting a Direct Connection Using the Oracle Thin Driver

The following example shows how to set a direct connection using the Oracle Thin Driver.

In the code:

• Set the following properties

  Properties props = new Properties();
  props.setProperty("user", "scott");
  props.setProperty("password", "tiger");
  Driver driver = null;
  Connection con = null; 

• Instantiate the driver:

  // ThinDriver driver 
   driver = (Driver)Class.forName
    ("oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver").newInstance(); 

• Make the connection:

  // Thin driver connection
  con = driver.connect
    ("jdbc:oracle:thin:@myHost.mydomain.com:1521:DEMO", props);

The following example shows how to set a direct connection using the Sybase jConnect Driver.

In the code:

• Set the following properties

  Properties props = new Properties();
  props.setProperty("user", "myuser");
  props.setProperty("password", "mypass");
  Driver driver = null;
  Connection con = null; 

• Instantiate the driver

  // Sybase jConnect driver
  driver = (Driver)Class.forName
    ("com.sybase.jdbc.SybDriver").newInstance()

• Make the connection

// Sybase jConnect
con = driver.connect
("jdbc:sybase:Tds:myDB@myhost:myport), props);