Importing JDBC drivers for data sources

If you need to connect to unsupported data sources, an IBM® Cloud Pak for Data administrator must upload the JDBC driver for the data source to the web client.

Before you begin

Required permissions
To import JDBC drivers, you must have one of the following permissions:
  • Administer platform

About this task

After the driver is uploaded, you can create Generic JDBC connections to your data sources from:
  • The platform connections catalog
  • Catalogs
  • Analytics projects

Common core services This feature is available only when the Cloud Pak for Data common core services are installed. The common core services are automatically installed by services that rely on them. If you don't see the Platform connections page, it's because none of the service that are installed on your environment rely on the common core services.

Procedure

To import a JDBC driver:

  1. Log in to Cloud Pak for Data.
  2. From the navigation menu, select Data > Platform connections.
  3. Open the JDBC drivers tab.
  4. Browse for the JAR file or files that are required to connect to the data source.
  5. Click Upload.

What to do next

You can now create generic JDBC connections using the driver files. To create a connection, you must have the following information about the data source:
Information Status Description
Required JAR files Required The JAR files required to connect to the data source. If a JDBC connection requires multiple JAR files, ensure that you know which JAR files are needed.
JDBC driver class Required The name of the JDBC driver class. This name is specified by the JDBC driver provider. For details, refer to the JDBC driver documentation.
JDBC URL Required The JDBC URL used to connect to the database. Refer to the JDBC driver documentation for information about the syntax of the URL.
SSL details Conditional If the port that you specified in the JDBC URL is configured to accept SSL connections, ensure that you select The port is configured to accept SSL connections

If your data source uses chained certificates, you can specify the contents of multiple certificates.

If you paste the self-signed certificate into the SSL Certificate box, the certificate will be imported into a temporary truststore and secured with a password. You must reference the truststore and password in the JDBC connection URL by specifying the connection properties in the JDBC properties box.

For example:

key1=${truststore_file}
key2=${truststore_password}
Batch size Optional The maximum number of rows to send to the database. The default is 2000.
Fetch size Optional The maximum number of rows to fetch from the database for each call. The default is 2000.
Case-sensitivity Conditional If the IDs in the database are case-sensitive, select Indicates whether ID values for this database are case sensitive.
JDBC properties Optional The JDBC properties to use to connect to the database. Specify the properties with the following format:
key1=value1
key2=value2
key3=value3
...

Refer to the JDBC driver documentation for information about supported properties.
Row limit support Optional Indicates whether the driver supports a row limit in a SELECT statement. You can specify:
  • None
  • Prefix
  • Suffix
Row limit prefix Conditional If you set Row limit support to Prefix, specify the prefix that is used to indicate a row limit in a SELECT.

Use ${row_limit} to indicate where to put the row limit value. For example:

TOP ${row_limit}
Row limit suffix Conditional If you set Row limit support to Suffix, specify the suffix that is used to indicate a row limit in a SELECT.

Use ${row_limit} to indicate where to put the row limit value. For example:

LIMIT ${row_limit} ROWS