Configuring database pools in Websphere

Anadi Misra

Every time an application requires access to a database entity, it opens a connection to that database. In a scenario where several such applications access the same database, the number of open connections become very large. But not all of these connections are active all the time and resources can be saved if an idle connection can be reused by some other process rather each process opening and closing a new connection.

This concept that lets different parts (or different applications) share the same open database connection is called as Connection Pooling. Traditionally, developers would use manual methods - like storing connection objects in a collection or array and managing these 'pools' in code - to do this.

Websphere allows Java EE developers to achieve the same thing at a macro-level.

Connection pooling management in Websphere can be done from its admin console, which can be accessed from any browser. To begin, setup the WASCE (Websphere Application Server Community Edition) and start the server  from Programs menu.

Step 1

Open the admin console by navigating to https://localhost:8443/console/portal/welcome. Login using the admin id and password (defaults are 'system' and 'manager' respectively). Click on the Database Pools link on the top right pane of the welcome page or from the 'Services' tree node in the left panel of same. From the options click on the link 'Using Geronimo Database Pool Wizard' link. In the following page specify a name for the pool and select the required type from the 'Database Type' list that is MySQL in our case. Click on Next to proceed.

Step 2

Specify the Driver Class name, and Driver JAR type viz. 'org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver' and 'mysql/mysql-connector-java/ /jar' respectively in our case. The rest of the fields require a username, password, hostname and port (default 3306). Click on Next to provide additional parameters such as minimum and maximum pool size and idle and block time-out. Clicking on 'Skip Test and Deploy' deploys the pool.

Source: PCQuest