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

Connect to SAP SuccessFactors 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 authenticate to SAP Success Factors using Basic authentication or OAuth with SAML assertion.

   Basic Authentication

   You must provide values for the following properties to successfully authenticate to SAP Success Factors. Note that the provider will reuse the session opened by SAP Success Factors using cookies. Which means that your credentials will be used only on the first request to open the session. After that, cookies returned from SAP Success Factors will be used for authentication.

   • Url: set this to the URL of the server hosting Success Factors. Some of the servers are listed in the SAP support documentation (external link).
   • User: set this to the username of your account.
   • Password: set this to the password of your account.
   • CompanyId: set this to the unique identifier of your company.

   OAuth Authentication

   You must provide values for the following properties, which will be used to get the access token.

   • Url: set this to the URL of the server hosting Success Factors. Some of the servers are listed in the SAP support documentation (external link).
   • User: set this to the username of your account.
   • CompanyId: set this to the unique identifier of your company.
   • OAuthClientId: set this to the API Key that was generated in API Center.
   • OAuthClientSecret: the X.509 private key used to sign SAML assertion. The private key can be found in the certificate you downloaded in Registering your OAuth Client Application.
   • InitiateOAuth: set this to GETANDREFRESH.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

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

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.sapsuccessfactors.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/sapsuccessfactors" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.sapsuccessfactors.SAPSuccessFactorsDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:sapsuccessfactors:User=username;Password=password;CompanyId=CompanyId;Url=https://api4.successfactors.com;" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />
   

   To allow a single application to access SAP SuccessFactors 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 SAP SuccessFactors for all applications.

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

    SAP SuccessFactors data JSP
    jdbc/SAPSuccessFactors
    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/SAPSuccessFactors");
   Connection conn = ds.getConnection();
    

More Tomcat Integration

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