Configure the CData JDBC Driver for Epicor Kinetic 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 Epicor Kinetic data from a connection pool in Tomcat.

Connect to Epicor Kinetic 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.

   To successfully connect to your ERP instance, you must specify the following connection properties:

   • Url:the URL of the server hosting your ERP instance. For example, https://myserver.EpicorSaaS.com
   • ERPInstance: the name of your ERP instance.
   • User: the username of your account.
   • Password: the password of your account.
   • Service: the service you want to retrieve data from. For example, BaqSvc.

   In addition, you may also set the optional connection properties:

   • ApiKey: An optional key that may be required for connection to some services depending on your account configuration.
   • ApiVersion: Defaults to v1. May be set to v2 to use the newer Epicor API.
   • Company: Required if you set the ApiVersion to v2.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

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

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.epicorerp.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/epicorerp" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.epicorerp.EpicorERPDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:epicorerp:Service=Erp.BO.CustomerSvc;ERPInstance=MyInstance;URL=https://myaccount.epicorsaas.com;User=username;Password=password;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />
   

   To allow a single application to access Epicor Kinetic 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 Epicor Kinetic for all applications.

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

    Epicor Kinetic data JSP
    jdbc/EpicorERP
    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/EpicorERP");
   Connection conn = ds.getConnection();
    

More Tomcat Integration

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