DBD::JDBC - JDBC proxy driver for the DBI module Copyright 1999-2001,2005-2006 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. The DBD::JDBC Java server uses the following JDBC 2.0 features: java.sql.Types.{BLOB, CLOB, ARRAY}, ResultSet.getCharacterStream, ResultSet.getBlob and the java.sql.Blob type, ResultSet.getClob and the java.sql.Clob type. Public methods of the JDBC Connection, Statement, ResultSet, and ResultSetMetaData classes, including any public driver-specific methods not part of the JDBC API, are exposed using reflection and the $h->jdbc_func method. Only methods with primitive or String parameters and return types are currently supported in this way. 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 5.8 or higher Convert::BER 1.31 DBI 1.48 or higher In addition to Perl, the following must be available in order to run this driver. Java Virtual Machine compatible with JDK 1.4 JDBC driver for your database of choice log4j-1.2.13 (included) 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 "make test" step will run tests against the included hsqldb database. The classpath and JDBC URL are preconfigured to allow these tests to succeed. If the java executable is not in your path, set the following environment variable: 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. You may override the port which the Perl and Java components of this driver will use during testing. To do this, set the following environment variable: DBDJDBC_PORT: The default value is 43321. There are some database-specific tests included; the test files are named for the database used. See the tests in t/. These tests make use of some standard default values. If you wish to run one of those database tests, set the following environment variables: CLASSPATH: this must include your JDBC driver and any supporting files required by that driver. DBDJDBC_URL: a valid URL for your JDBC driver. 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. KNOWN BUGS Oracle LOBs can't be read with this driver. This requires either Oracle-specific functionality, a further extension to the $h->jdbc_func methods to support arbitrary objects, or support for JDBC 2.0. A problem has been reported reading many LONG values from Oracle. NOT YET IMPLEMENTED DBI-defined methods, including DBI->data_sources('JDBC'), $dbh->data_sources the metadata methods $dbh->table_info, $dbh->tables, $dbh->type_info_all, $dbh->type_info, $dbh->column_info, $dbh->primary_key_info, $dbh->primary_key, $dbh->foreign_key_info $sth->cancel $sth->bind_param_inout $dbh->clone $dbh->get_info (partial as of 0.69) Access to JDBC-specific functionality. Some amount of JDBC functionality is currently exposed using $h->jdbc_func and Java reflection. FOR MORE INFORMATION perldoc DBI For general DBI information and questions, see the DBI home page at http://dbi.perl.org/ To contact the author of this module, send email to Gennis Emerson