Tomcat vs Weblogic JNDI Lookup

Question

The Weblogic servers we are using have been configured to allow JNDI datasource names like "appds".

For development (localhost), we might be running Tomcat and when declared in the <context> section of server.xml, Tomcat will hang JNDI datasources on "java:comp/env/jdbc/*" in the JNDI tree.

Problem: in Weblogic, the JNDI lookup is "appds" whilst in Tomcat, it seems that that I must provide the formal "java:comp/env/jdbc/appds". I'm afraid the Tomcat version is an implicit standard but unfortunately, I can't change Weblogic's config ... so that means we end up with two different spring config files (we're using spring 2.5) to facilitate the different environments.

Is there an elegant way to address this. Can I look JNDI names up directly in Tomcat? Can Spring take a name and look in both places? Google searches or suggestions would be great.

Answer 1

JndiLocatorSupport has a property resourceRef. When setting this true, "java:comp/env/" prefix will be prepended automatically. So I believe it would be correct to differentiate this parameter when moving from Tomcat to Weblogic.

Answer 2

How to use a single JNDI name in your web app

I've struggled with this for a few months myself. The best solution is to make your application portable so you have the same JNDI name in both Tomcat and Weblogic.

In order to do that, you change your web.xml and spring-beans.xml to point to a single jndi name, and provide a mapping to each vendor specific jndi name.

I've placed each file below.

You need:

• A <resource-ref /> entry in web.xml for your app to use a single name
• A file WEB-INF/weblogic.xml to map your jndi name to the resource managed by WebLogic
• A file META-INF/context.xml to map your jndi name to the resource managed by Tomcat
  • This can be either in the Tomcat installation or in your app.

As a general rule, prefer to have your jndi names in your app like jdbc/MyDataSource and jms/ConnFactory and avoid prefixing them with java:comp/env/.

Also, data sources and connection factories are best managed by the container and used with JNDI. It's a common mistake to instantiate database connection pools in your application.

spring

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:jee="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-jee-3.0.xsd">

<jee:jndi-lookup jndi-name="jdbc/appds"
                 id="dataSource" />
</beans>

web.xml

<resource-ref>
    <description>My data source</description>
    <res-ref-name>jdbc/appds</res-ref-name>
    <res-type>javax.sql.DataSource</res-type>
    <res-auth>Container</res-auth>
</resource-ref>

weblogic.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<weblogic-web-app
    xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/weblogic/weblogic-web-app"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://xmlns.oracle.com/weblogic/weblogic-web-app http://http://www.oracle.com/technology/weblogic/weblogic-web-app/1.1/weblogic-web-app.xsd">

<resource-description>
    <jndi-name>appds</jndi-name>
    <res-ref-name>jdbc/appds</res-ref-name>
</resource-description>
</weblogic-web-app>

META-INF/context.xml (for Tomcat)

<Context>
    <ResourceLink global="jdbc/appds" name="jdbc/appds" type="javax.sql.DataSource"/>
</Context>

Answer 3

I've managed the trick with Tomcat and WebLogic using Spring. Here is a description of how it worked for me.

Answer 4

The following config works in Tomcat and Weblogic for me.

In Spring:

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
   <!-- This will prepend 'java:comp/env/' for Tomcat, but still fall back to the short name for Weblogic -->
   <property name="resourceRef" value="true" /> 
   <property name="jndiName" value="jdbc/AgriShare" />
</bean>

In Weblogic Admin Console create a JDBC resource named jdbc/AgriShare. Under 'Targets', MAKE SURE YOU TARGET THE DATASOURCE TO THE SERVER YOU ARE DEPLOYING YOUR APP TO!. This particular point cost me some time just now...

Answer 5

How about an evironment variable? Set developers machines with the tomcat name and production with the Weblogic name. You can even set your code to use a default one (WebLogic) in case the variable don't exist.

Answer 6

How are you referencing the resource in spring?

This is what we have for tomcat:

context:

<Resource name="jms/ConnectionFactory" auth="Container" type="org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQConnectionFactory" description="
JMS Connection Factory"
        factory="org.apache.activemq.jndi.JNDIReferenceFactory" brokerURL="tcp://localhost:61615" brokerName="StandaloneAc
tiveMQBroker"/>

spring:

    <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
       xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
       xmlns:jee="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-2.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-jee-2.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-2.0.xsd">

<jee:jndi-lookup jndi-name="jms/ConnectionFactory" id="connectionFactory" resource-ref="true"
                         expected-type="javax.jms.ConnectionFactory" lookup-on-startup="false"/>

The jee namespace comes from:

http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-jee-2.0.xsd

Answer 7

Setting up DataSource in the application itself is not that crazy :) I would say that is even mandatory if application is meant to be deployed on a grid. River, GigaSpaces, or similar.

Note: I do not say connection settings have to be hardcoded inside of WAR, they need to be supplied at deployment time/runtime. This simplifies management of cloud instances since there is only on place to configure.

Configuring resources at the container makes sense only if multiple applications are deployed there and they can use shared resource.

Again, in cloud type of deployments there is only one application per servlet container instance.

Answer 8

My application also had a similar problem and this is how I solved it:

1) WEB-INF/classes/application.properties contains the entry:

ds.jndi=java:comp/env/jdbc/tcds

2) On the WLS machine, I have an entry in the /etc/sysenv file:

ds.jndi=wlsds

3) I configured spring to lookup the JNDI vis the property ${ds.jndi}, using a PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer bean with classpath:application.properties and file:/etc/sysenv as locations. I also set the ignoreResourceNotFound to true so that developers need not have /etc/sysenv on their machines.

4) I run an integration test using Cargo+Jetty and I could not properly set up a JNDI environment there. So I have a fallback BasicDataSource configured too using the defaultObject property of JndiObjectFactoryBean.