Connecting TermWeb to SQL Server 2012

Owned by Patrik Westlund
Last updated: Nov 24, 2015
2 min read

These instructions will help you connect TermWeb to a Microsoft SQL Server 2012 database.

1. Create and Configure the SQL Server Database

  1. Create a database for TermWeb to store data in (e.g. termwebdb). 
    • Open SQL Server Management Studio and right click on Databases and select New Database

  2. Create a database user which TermWeb will connect as (e.g. termwebuser), with permissions for the database.
    • Create a new login (right click on Security and navigate to New > Login) and name it termwebuser. Select SQL Server Authentication and enter a password for the user.

    • Create a user for the database (right click on Security under termwebdb and navigate to New > User) and name it termwebuser. Enter termwebuser as Login name, then select Membership page and select the roles db_datareader, db_datawriter and db_owner.

  3. Ensure that TCP/IP is enabled on SQL Server and listening on the correct port (which is 1433 for a default SQL Server installation).
    • Run SQL Server Configuration Manager and navigate to SQL Server Network Configuration > Protocols for MSSQLSERVER
    • Check that the port is open in any firewall between TermWeb and SQL Server
       
  4. Ensure that SQL Server is operating in the appropriate authentication mode. 
    • By default, SQL Server operates in 'Windows Authentication mode'. However, if your user is not associated with a trusted SQL connection, i.e. 'Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18452' is received during TermWeb startup, you will need to change the authentication mode to 'SQL Server and Windows Authentication mode'. In SQL Server Management Studio, right-click on the server and navigate to Properties > Security to change the authentication mode.

  5. Execute the termweb_sqlserver.sql file from the installation package to create the database tables.
    • If you named the database something else than termwebdb, first edit the file and enter the database name in the first statement.
    • In SQL Server Management Studio, navigate to File > Open > File and select the file.
    • Right-click and select Execute, or just press F5 to run the script.

2. Copy the SQL Server JDBC Driver to Tomcat

  1. Download the SQL Server JDBC driver (v1.3.1) from jTDS.
  2. Add the SQL Server JDBC driver jar (jtds-1.3.1.jar) to <tomcat-install>/lib/ directory.

3. Configure a DataSource for TermWeb in Tomcat

  1. Edit <tomcat-install>/conf/context.xml. 

     

  2. Within the Context tags, insert the DataSource Resource tag:

    <Resource name="jdbc/TermWebDS"
    auth="Container"
    type="javax.sql.DataSource"
    driverClassName="net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver"
    url="jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://localhost/termwebdb;user=termwebuser;password=termwebpwd;useLOBs=false"
    maxActive="20"
    maxIdle="10"
    validationQuery="Select 1"/>

      • If SQL Server does not run on the same server as Tomcat, replace localhost in url with the name of the database server
      • If you named the database something else than termwebdb, replace termwebdb in url with your database name 
      • Replace termwebuser and termwebpwd in url with your database user and password.

    The configuration properties for Tomcat's standard data source resource factory (org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory) are as follows:

      • driverClassName – Fully qualified Java class name of the JDBC driver to be used.
      • maxTotal – The maximum number of active connections that can be allocated from this pool at the same time.
      • maxIdle – The maximum number of connections that can sit idle in this pool at the same time.
      • minIdle – The minimum number of idle connections that will remain in this pool at the same time.
      • maxWait – The maximum number of milliseconds that the pool will wait (when there are no available connections) for a connection to be returned before throwing an exception.
      • password – Database password to be passed to our JDBC driver.
      • url – Connection URL to be passed to our JDBC driver. (For backwards compatibility, the property driverName is also recognized.)
      • user – Database username to be passed to our JDBC driver.
      • testWhileIdle – If the validity of the connection should be tested also when idle. Recommended to set this to true to avoid hanging connections.
      • validationQuery – SQL query that can be used by the pool to validate connections before they are returned to the application. If specified, this query must be an SQL SELECT statement that returns at least one row.

(tick) Congratulations, you now have TermWeb connected to your SQL Server database.