DBD::JDBC - JDBC proxy driver for the DBI module Copyright 1999-2000 Vizdom Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl Kit, namely, under the terms of either: a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version, or b) the "Artistic License" that comes with the Perl Kit. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be seful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details. SUMMARY This module allows you to use DBI to access a JDBC driver from Perl and is implemented in a fashion similar to that of DBD::Proxy. There are two components: a pure Perl DBD::JDBC module, and a pure Java server application. Both must be installed in order to use this driver, though, like DBD::Proxy, they may be installed on separate machines. The DBD::JDBC Java server process is threaded and supports multiple simultaneous connections. JDBC 1.22 drivers are currently supported. JDBC 2.0-compatible drivers are expected to work, but no JDBC 2.0 functionality is exposed via DBD::JDBC. This module also allows a Java application or servlet to create a JDBC connection and then exec a Perl script which can use that pre-existing JDBC connection via DBI. See the JDBC.pod file for more information on usage. PREREQUISITES The following must be installed before attempting to install this driver. Perl 5.004_04 or higher Convert::BER 1.31 DBI 1.11 or higher In addition to Perl, the following must be available in order to run this driver. Java Virtual Machine compatible with JDK 1.1 JDBC driver for your database of choice Platform-specific notes On AIX, make sure you have the 1.1.6 (or later) JVM with support for the ASCII and ISO8859_1 character encodings. The DBD::JDBC server expects the Perl side to use an ASCII-encoded string to indicate its character set. This fails with an UnsupportedEncodingException on the older AIX JVM. INSTALLATION There are three components to install: Convert::BER, DBD::JDBC, and the Java server. * Convert::BER 1.31 See the README file included with Convert::BER for installation instructions. * The DBD::JDBC server component The Java classes and their source code are provided in dbd_jdbc.jar. Copy this file to a location of your choice. See the DBD::JDBC documentation (JDBC.pod) for instructions on running the server. You can install the DBD::JDBC Perl module and test it before setting up this server. * DBD::JDBC The installation procedure for the Perl module follows the usual Perl installation procedure, but see below for details on running the "make test" step successfully. perl Makefile.PL make make test make install The tests run during installation use various environment variables to locate your Java runtime, your JDBC driver, and so on. If you don't set the necessary environment variables, the tests will fail. PLEASE NOTE that the use of environment variables by the test scripts does not reflect normal usage of this driver; in general usage only the standard Java CLASSPATH environment variable needs to be set for the Java server portion of this driver. Also note that the test scripts attempt to start the Java server portion of this driver automatically; in normal usage, you will start the Java server by hand or in a startup script and leave it running (like a web server) for your scripts to connect to. If you do not have a JDBC driver for your database installed on the machine on which you're installing DBD::JDBC, only the first test will succeed, since the others use JDBC. - If your JDBC driver is installed on the same machine where you are performing the DBD::JDBC installation, set the following environment variables: DBDJDBC_JAVA_BIN: the Java executable. This will default to "java", so if java is in your path, you need not set this. Otherwise, set it to the complete path to your java executable. This will be used to start the Java server portion of this driver. CLASSPATH: this must include your JDBC driver and "./dbd_jdbc.jar" (the Java server portion of this driver). DBDJDBC_URL: a valid URL for your JDBC driver. A few tests for specific databases have been provided, based on the databases available during development. See the tests in t/ to see if a test is available for your driver and, if so, read the test file for more information on running that test. These test files provide some standard default values. If no database-specific test exists, you should also set the following environment variables: DBDJDBC_DRIVER: the complete class name of your JDBC driver. For example, for Oracle, use oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver. DBDJDBC_USER: the database username to use when connecting. DBDJDBC_PASSWORD: the database password to use when connecting. In either case, you may choose to override the port which the Perl and Java components of this driver will use during testing by setting DBDJDBC_PORT. The default is 43321. Use "make test TEST_VERBOSE=1" to see which values the test script is using in its attempt to connect. NOT YET IMPLEMENTED DBI interface methods. DBI->data_sources('JDBC') the metadata methods $dbh->table_info, $dbh->tables, $dbh->type_info_all, and $dbh->type_info $sth->cancel $sth->bind_param_inout Access to JDBC-specific functionality. FOR MORE INFORMATION perldoc DBI For general DBI information and questions, see the DBI home page at http://www.symbolstone.org/technology/perl/DBI/index.html To contact the author of this module, Gennis Emerson