Configure the CData JDBC Driver for Neo4J 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 Neo4J data from a connection pool in Tomcat.

Connect to Neo4J 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 connect to Neo4j, set the following connection properties:

   • Server: The server hosting the Neo4j instance.
   • Port: The port on which the Neo4j service is running. The provider connects to port 7474 by default.
   • User: The username of the user using the Neo4j instance.
   • Password: The password of the user using the Neo4j instance.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

   For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Neo4J JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.neo4j.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/neo4j" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.neo4j.Neo4jDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:neo4j:Server=localhost;Port=7474;User=my_user;Password=my_password;" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />
   

   To allow a single application to access Neo4J 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 Neo4J for all applications.

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

    Neo4J data JSP
    jdbc/Neo4j
    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/Neo4j");
   Connection conn = ds.getConnection();
    

More Tomcat Integration

The steps above show how to connect to Neo4J data in a simple connection pooling scenario. For more use cases and information, see the JNDI Datasource How-To in the Tomcat documentation.