Configure the CData JDBC Driver for Excel Online 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 Excel Online data from a connection pool in Tomcat.

Connect to Excel Online 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 to a workbook by providing authentication to Excel Online and then setting the following properties:

   • : Set this to the name or Id of the workbook.

     If you want to view a list of information about the available workbooks, execute a query to the Workbooks view after you authenticate.

   • : Set this to true if you are connecting to a workbook in a sandbox account. Otherwise, leave this blank to connect to a production account.

   You use the OAuth authentication standard to authenticate to Excel Online. See the Getting Started section in the help documentation for a guide. Getting Started also guides you through executing SQL to worksheets and ranges.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

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

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.excelonline.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/excelonline" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.excelonline.ExcelOnlineDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:excelonline:InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />
   

   To allow a single application to access Excel Online 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 Excel Online for all applications.

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

    Excel Online data JSP
    jdbc/ExcelOnline
    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/ExcelOnline");
   Connection conn = ds.getConnection();
    

More Tomcat Integration

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