Configure the CData JDBC Driver for Act CRM in a Connection Pool in Tomcat

The CData JDBC Drivers support standard JDBC interfaces to integrate with Web applications running on the JVM. This article details how to connect to Act CRM data from a connection pool in Tomcat.

Connect to Act CRM Data through a Connection Pool in Tomcat

1. Copy the CData JAR and CData .lic file to $CATALINA_HOME/lib. The CData JAR is located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
2. Add a definition of the resource to the context. Specify the JDBC URL here.

   The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid Act! user credentials. In addition to the authentication values, see the following:

   • Connecting to Act! Premium

     In addition to the authentication values, the URL to Act! is also required; for example https://eup1-iis-04.eu.hosted.act.com/.

     Additionally, you must specify the ActDatabase you will connect to. This is found by going to the About Act! Premium menu of your account, at the top right of the page, in the ? menu. Use the Database Name in the window that appears.

   • Connecting to Act! Premium Cloud

     To connect to your Act! Premium Cloud account, you also need to specify the ActCloudName property. This property is found in the URL address of the Cloud account; for example https://eup1-iis-04.eu.hosted.act.com/ActCloudName/.

   Note that retrieving ActCRM metadata can be expensive. It is advised that you set the CacheMetadata property to store the metadata locally.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

   For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Act CRM JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.actcrm.jar

   Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

   You can see the JDBC URL specified in the resource definition below.

   <Resource name="jdbc/actcrm" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.actcrm.ActCRMDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:actcrm:URL=https://myActCRMserver.com;User=myUser;Password=myPassword;ActDatabase=MyDB;" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />

   To allow a single application to access Act CRM data, add the code above to the context.xml in the application's META-INF directory.

   For a shared resource configuration, add the code above to the context.xml located in $CATALINA_BASE/conf. A shared resource configuration provides connectivity to Act CRM for all applications.

3. Add a reference to the resource to the web.xml for the application. Act CRM data JSP jdbc/ActCRM javax.sql.DataSource Container
4. Initialize connections from the connection pool: Context initContext = new InitialContext(); Context envContext = (Context)initContext.lookup("java:/comp/env"); DataSource ds = (DataSource)envContext.lookup("jdbc/ActCRM"); Connection conn = ds.getConnection();

More Tomcat Integration

The steps above show how to connect to Act CRM data in a simple connection pooling scenario. For more use cases and information, see the JNDI Datasource How-To in the Tomcat documentation.