How to Setup Global JNDI Mapping
for Oracle JDBC Connection Pooling with Tomcat

Preface

This document was originally created to outline the implementation of JNDI for Oracle connections. After working with both 5.0 and 5.5 configurations extensively, and with JDK 1.4.2 versus 1.5, I have come to realize that there are really two ways of implementing the global database JNDI configuration. The only difference I found was that the 5.0.x installation did not always work without a modification to the context web.xml file (Step 3). In 5.5 this was not necessary.

While there are apparently several suggested ways to accomplish global JNDI connectivity, this way seems to work consistently on a variety of platforms. This how-to assumes that you want the JNDI sources available to all contexts.

There are two possible ways to perform JNDI mapping; one uses a fixed logon, the other a dynamic one.  In the later case you will be required to add the necessary code to collect the proper username and password.  However, in doing this, configuration files may be used that can contain encrypted passwords thereby securing the database in the event that the Tomcat server is compromised.

Nomenclature:

Note: All examples are given in Unix path notation, use Windows notation where applicable.
 

Section Index