MSSQL with the jTDS JDBC Driver

About Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL) is a commercial database product available from Microsoft
Further technical information on this product may be found here

ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase
 SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION ON
ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase
 SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON

CREATE UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [UP_DLM_FRAGMENT_NAME_UIDX] ON [dbo].[UP_DLM_EVALUATOR] ([FRAGMENT_NAME] ASC)
WHERE ([fragment_name] IS NOT NULL)

Step 1: Obtaining the Driver

Since the jTDS JDBC driver for MSSQL is not available in the central Maven repository, it must be placed into the local repository of each machine on which you wish to build uPortal.

As an alternative to this, you could set up a maven repository for use by multiple machines.

The first step is to download the JDBC driver for your database. The preferred driver is the jTDS driver from sourceforge. It can be obtained here.

To install the JAR into your local maven repository, use the following command:

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=net.sourceforge -DartifactId=jtds -Dversion=1.2 -Dpackaging=jar -DgeneratePom=true -Dfile=jtds-1.2.jar

The groupId, artifactId and version specified in this command are up to you, but they should match the JAR vendor, name and version to avoid confusion down the road.

Step 2: Add the Dependency

From the uPortal source directory, open the uPortal-4.x.x/pom.xml file, there is a section about 110 lines down that reads:

<!-- The JDBC Driver used by uPortal -->
    <jdbc.groupId>hsqldb</jdbc.groupId>
    <jdbc.artifactId>hsqldb</jdbc.artifactId>
    <jdbc.version>${hsqldb.version}</jdbc.version>

Modify this to use the MSSQL driver, using the group, artifact and version information from the mvn install:install-file command above.

<!-- The JDBC Driver used by uPortal -->
    <jdbc.groupId>net.sourceforge</jdbc.groupId>
    <jdbc.artifactId>jtds</jdbc.artifactId>
<!-- Use this version if running uPortal 4.0.x on JDK 6 -->
    <jdbc.version>1.2</jdbc.version>

<!-- For uPortal 4.0.9.1 and up - only if running JDK 7! -->
    <jdbc.version>1.3</jdbc.version>

See Issues section about possible issues using this driver.

Step 3: Configure the Database Filter     

     1. In the filters folder, locate the default local.properties file under uPortal-4.x.x/filters/local.properties and configure the Database Connection Settings

# HSQL Configuration
environment.build.hsql.port=8887

# Database Connection Settings (Uncomment the Maven Filters section in rdbm.properties)
environment.build.hibernate.connection.driver_class=net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver
environment.build.hibernate.connection.url=jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://my.school.edu:1433/uPortal3db
environment.build.hibernate.connection.username=sa
environment.build.hibernate.connection.password=
environment.build.hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.SQLServerDialect


 

Step 4: Test the Configuration

Running the dbtest ant target will tell you if you have configured the database connection properly.

ant dbtest

Step 5: Build and Deploy 

Following a successful test, you can execute the command below to build the database tables and copy files to your servlet container. 

ant clean initportal

Step 6: Restart Tomcat

Credits

Much of the information on this page was provided by Bikrant Neupane on the uportal-user list. Thanks.