Establishing a Connection

Creating a JDBC Data Source

You can create a JDBC data source to connect from your Java application. Creating a JDBC data source based on the CData JDBC Driver for Oracle consists of three basic steps:

Add the driver JAR file to the classpath. The JAR file is located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory. Note that the .lic file must be located in the same folder as the JAR file.
Provide the driver class. For example:
```
cdata.jdbc.oracleoci.OracleOciDriver
```
Provide the JDBC URL. For example:
```
jdbc:oracleoci:User=scott;Password=tiger;Server=127.0.0.1;Port=1521;

or

jdbc:cdata:oracleoci:User=scott;Password=tiger;Server=127.0.0.1;Port=1521;
```
The second format above can be used whenever there is a conflict in your application between drivers using the same URL format to ensure you are using the CData driver. The URL must start with either "jdbc:oracleoci:" or "jdbc:cdata:oracleoci:" and can include any of the connection properties in name-value pairs separated with semicolons.

Before You Connect

To connect to Oracle, you will first need to update the appropriate environment variable. This variable must contain a folder location that includes the Oracle OCI Library assemblies, which are shipped alongside the driver. The correct environment variable depends upon your platform:

Windows: The native libraries should be on your PATH.
Mac: The native libraries should be on your DYLIB_LIBRARY_PATH.
Linux: The native libraries should be on your LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

These native libraries can be found in the lib folder inside the installation directory of the driver.

Note for Linux Users: The Linux Oracle OCI libraries used by the driver have an additional required dependency on the AIO library.

On Debian, Ubuntu and related distributions this library is available via the libaio1 package:

sudo apt-get install libaio1

On RHEL, CentOS and related distributions this library is available via the libaio package:

sudo yum install libaio

Connecting to Oracle OCI

The following connection types are available:

Oracle Server
OracleTNS
LDAP

Oracle Server

After you have added the appropriate libraries to your PATH, set the following to connect:

User: The user Id provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
Password: The password provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
Port: The port used to connect to the server hosting the Oracle database.
ServiceName: The service name of the Oracle database. You can obtain this value by querying global_name (select * from global_name) using the Oracle SQL*PLUS command line.
Server: The host name or IP address of the server hosting the Oracle database.

OracleTNS

Set the following connection properties prior to connecting:

User: The user Id provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
Password: The password provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
DataSource: The Oracle Net Services Name, Connect Descriptor (known also as TNS Connect String), or a connection name that identifies the database to which to connect. You should be able to find these values in your tnsnames.ora file.

For example,

DataSource='(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(protocol_address_information))(CONNECT_DATA= (SERVICE_NAME=service_name)))'

LDAP

In this scheme, you need to authenticate to the LDAP server. Set the following connection properties to connect:

User: The user Id provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
Password: The password provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
LDAPUri: The LDAP URI used to connect to the LDAP server.
LDAPUser: The User account for LDAP server.
LDAPPassword: The password for the LDAP user.

Your connection string should look similar to this:

LDAPUri=ldap://myldap.com:389/SERVICE_EXMPL,cn=OracleContext,dc=example,dc=com; User=ORACLEUSER; Password=OracleUserPassword;

Note that this connection type requires both your Oracle and LDAP usernames and passwords. Your system administrator may allow anonymous LDAP logins, in which case your LDAP username and password are not needed.