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

Connect to Okta 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 Okta, set the Domain connection string property to your Okta domain.

   You will use OAuth to authenticate with Okta, so you need to create a custom OAuth application.

   Creating a Custom OAuth Application

   From your Okta account:

   1. Sign in to your Okta developer edition organization with your administrator account.
   2. In the Admin Console, go to Applications > Applications.
   3. Click Create App Integration.
   4. For the Sign-in method, select OIDC - OpenID Connect.
   5. For Application type, choose Web Application.
   6. Enter a name for your custom application.
   7. Set the Grant Type to Authorization Code. If you want the token to be automatically refreshed, also check Refresh Token.
   8. Set the callback URL:
      • For desktop applications and headless machines, use http://localhost:33333 or another port number of your choice. The URI you set here becomes the property.
      • For web applications, set the callback URL to a trusted redirect URL. This URL is the web location the user returns to with the token that verifies that your application has been granted access.
   9. In the Assignments section, either select Limit access to selected groups and add a group, or skip group assignment for now.
   10. Save the OAuth application.
   11. The application's Client Id and Client Secret are displayed on the application's General tab. Record these for future use. You will use the Client Id to set the OAuthClientId and the Client Secret to set the OAuthClientSecret.
   12. Check the Assignments tab to confirm that all users who must access the application are assigned to the application.
   13. On the Okta API Scopes tab, select the scopes you wish to grant to the OAuth application. These scopes determine the data that the app has permission to read, so a scope for a particular view must be granted for the driver to have permission to query that view. To confirm the scopes required for each view, see the view-specific pages in Data Model < Views in the Help documentation.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

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

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.okta.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/okta" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.okta.OktaDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:okta:Domain=dev-44876464.okta.com;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />
   

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

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

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

More Tomcat Integration

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