Configure the CData JDBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse 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 Microsoft Dataverse data from a connection pool in Tomcat.

Getting Started

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Connect to Microsoft Dataverse 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.

   You can connect without setting any connection properties for your user credentials. Below are the minimum connection properties required to connect.

   • InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
   • OrganizationUrl: Set this to the organization URL you are connecting to, such as https://myorganization.crm.dynamics.com.
   • Tenant (optional): Set this if you wish to authenticate to a different tenant than your default. This is required to work with an organization not on your default Tenant.

   When you connect the Common Data Service OAuth endpoint opens in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions. The OAuth process completes automatically.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

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

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.cds.jar
   

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

   👁 Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)
   

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

   <Resource name="jdbc/cds" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.cds.CDSDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:cds:OrganizationUrl=https://myaccount.crm.dynamics.com/;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />
   

   To allow a single application to access Microsoft Dataverse 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 Microsoft Dataverse for all applications.

3. Add a reference to the resource to the web.xml for the application.

    Microsoft Dataverse data JSP
    jdbc/CDS
    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/CDS");
   Connection conn = ds.getConnection();
    

More Tomcat Integration

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