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More action with Struts 2
In a recent review of Struts 2 in Action, JW Blogger Oleg Mikheev notes that Struts 2 is "just a collection of extensions built upon WebWork, which is ultimately
the right thing to learn before starting a Struts 2 project." While Struts 2 has some architectural flaws, Oleg calls WebWork
well-designed, well-tested, and reliable. What are your experiences using Struts 2 and WebWork?
Also see "Hello World the WebWork way," a JavaWorld excerpt from WebWork in Action, by Patrick Lightbody and Jason Carreira.
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Two questions:
Class.forName(....) and DriverManager.getConnection(....), what driver and URL should you use?
There are two techniques available for connecting to a data source using JDBC. First, if your program will talk to an ODBC
data source, you can use the JDBC-ODBC bridge included with your JDK. In the case of Sun, you would use sun.jdbc.odbc.JbdcOdbcDriver.
Specifically, using Class.forName:
Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");
or the command line:
java -Djdbc.drivers=sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver <program name>
Second, you can connect to your data source through a third-party, vendor-specific bridge. In the case of a third party driver, you simply substitute that driver for the JDBC-ODBC bridge driver.
See the Resources section below for a link to Sun's database of available drivers.
Once you have a driver loaded and your data source set up, getting a connection is a simple matter of feeding the correct
URL, name, and password to the getConnection() method.
A JDBC URL takes the following form:
jdbc:<subprotocol>:<subname>
In the case of Microsoft Access and the ODBC bridge, it would take the form:
jdbc:odbc:<NAME>
where <NAME> is the name that you gave the data source when you set it up.
As an aside for those using other drivers, <subprotocol> is the name of the connectivity mechanism used by the driver.
In my answer, I've assumed quite a bit of JDBC knowledge. If you're completely new to JDBC, or even if you just need to brush up your skills a bit, head on over to the JDBC Short Course (see Resources), an excellent training course that will get you up to speed quickly.