Connect to REST Data from a Connection Pool in JBoss

CData JDBC drivers can be configured in JBoss by following the standard procedure for connection pooling. This article details how to access REST data from a connection pool in JBoss applications. This article details how to use the JBoss Management Interface to configure the CData JDBC Driver for REST. You will then access REST data from a connection pool.

Create a JDBC Data Source for REST from the Management Console

Follow the steps below to add the driver JAR and define required connection properties.

1. In the Runtime menu, select the Domain or Server menu, depending on whether you are deploying to a managed domain or to a stand-alone server, and click "Manage deployments" to open the Deployments page.
2. Click Add. In the resulting wizard, add the JAR file and license for the driver, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory. Finish the wizard with the defaults, select the driver, and click Enable.
3. In the Configuration menu, click Subsystems -> Connector -> Datasources. This opens the JDBC Datasources page.
4. Click Add and, in the resulting wizard, enter a name for the driver and the JNDI name. For example: java:jboss/root/jdbc/REST
5. Select the driver that you added above.

6. Enter the JDBC URL and the username and password. The syntax of the JDBC URL is jdbc:rest: followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

   See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models REST APIs as bidirectional database tables and XML/JSON files as read-only views (local files, files stored on popular cloud services, and FTP servers). The major authentication schemes are supported, including HTTP Basic, Digest, NTLM, OAuth, and FTP. See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation for authentication guides.

   After setting the URI and providing any authentication values, set Format to "XML" or "JSON" and set DataModel to more closely match the data representation to the structure of your data.

   The DataModel property is the controlling property over how your data is represented into tables and toggles the following basic configurations.

   • Document (default): Model a top-level, document view of your REST data. The data provider returns nested elements as aggregates of data.
   • FlattenedDocuments: Implicitly join nested documents and their parents into a single table.
   • Relational: Return individual, related tables from hierarchical data. The tables contain a primary key and a foreign key that links to the parent document.

   See the Modeling REST Data chapter for more information on configuring the relational representation. You will also find the sample data used in the following examples. The data includes entries for people, the cars they own, and various maintenance services performed on those cars.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

   For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the REST JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.rest.jar

   Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

   A typical connection string is below:

   jdbc:rest:DataModel=Relational;URI=C:/people.xml;Format=XML;
7. Test the connection and finish the wizard. Select the REST data source and click Enable.

More JBoss Integration

The steps above show how to configure the driver in a simple connection pooling scenario. For more information, refer to the Data Source Management chapter in the JBoss EAP documentation.