WebLogic: The Definitive Guide

Overview of JDBC Resources

In order to enable a JDBC application to obtain a connection to a database, you need to install a two-tier JDBC driver on WebLogic Server. Only then can you use the JDBC driver to configure a connection pool on the server. This pool of reusable database connections then is available to all server-side applications and to any remote clients of WebLogic. Typically, a JDBC application will access the connection pool through a data source associated with the pool. A multipool provides additional load-balancing and failover capabilities over a number of connection pools. Let’s take a closer look at these JDBC resources.

JDBC Drivers for WebLogic Server

A JDBC driver provides the actual connectivity to a vendor’s DBMS product, as well as provides the implementation of the standard JDBC interfaces and classes. WebLogic supports two kinds of JDBC drivers:

Two-tier drivers

These JDBC drivers provide vendor-specific database access to WebLogic Server and the applications running on it. You can use a two-tier JDBC driver to configure a pool of reusable connections to the underlying database. Two-tier drivers include the JDBC drivers for Oracle, Sybase, and Microsoft shipped with WebLogic and third-party drivers such as the Oracle Thin Driver, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 JDBC driver, Sybase jConnect Driver, or the IBM JDBC drivers for Informix and DB2. A two-tier driver typically will provide native support for distributed transactions (WebLogic’s jDriver for Oracle ...