Question

I’m fairly new to Tomcat and Java web development and am banging my head against a wall with an issue im experiencing.

I have a web application that works fine on my local box (windows xp), I have Tomcat 6 installed with the WAR file deployed to the webapps folder and within the c:/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/conf/Catalina/localhost/ directory i have the “myApp.xml”.

The myApp.xml contains the following:

<Context path="/myApp" docBase="/myApp.war" debug="1" reloadable="true" cookies="true">
  <Resource name="jdbc/sql-connection" scope="Shareable" type="javax.sql.DataSource" auth="Container" username="test" password="test" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" driverClassName="net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver" url="jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://xxxx:xxxx;appName=myApp" removeAbandoned="true" logAbandoned="true" /> 
  </Context>

Then within my web app i have the following info within my applicationContext file

<bean id="myDatasource" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
        <property name="jndiName">
            <value>java:comp/env/jdbc/sql-connection</value>
        </property>
    </bean> 

Now i’ve gone from it all working fine on my local box to deploying it on a Linux box, however when I deploy it on there, with exactly the same setup just tomcat is running from “opt/apache-tomcat-6.0.18”. Every time I try to start Tomcat on the box it will unpack the WAR file but wont start it, and gives me the following error whenever i try to start it through the manager:

Error creating bean with name 'myDatasource' defined in file [/opt/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/webapps/myApp/WEB-INF/classes/applicationContext.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is javax.naming.NameNotFoundException: Name jdbc is not bound in this Context

Ive tried looking all over the internet for an answer but nothing seems to have the exact same issue, and the names seem to match between the tomcat config file and the web app.

Answer 1

First of all, Tomcat doesn’t understand myApp.xml (unless you explicitly points it to it, which I don’t know how). Tomcat works based on context, which can be configured for your web application. Tomcat allows only deployment of Web Aplication Archive (WAR) file.

To create a context for your application, create a context.xml (all small caps, case-sensitive) file inside your Web application META-INF folder.

Your reference guide to configuring context can be found on Tomcat 6 Config/Context. You will see that attribute debug is deprecated.

The JNDI Resources HOW-TO for Tomcat 6 is also available.

Once you have created your context.xml inside your META-INF folder, paste the following code (taken from your example) below:

<Context path="/myApp" docBase="/myApp.war" reloadable="true" cookies="true">
    <Resource name="jdbc/sql-connection" type="javax.sql.DataSource" auth="Container" username="test" password="test" driverClassName="net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver" url="jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://xxxx:xxxx;appName=myApp" removeAbandoned="true" logAbandoned="true" /> 
</Context>

(By default, Tomcat uses PoolableDataSource for Connection Pooling).

Once you’re done, config your <resource-env-ref> in your WEB-INF/web.xml. That will allow you to create Shareable scope. Please refer to the link provided on Tomcat 6 JNDI, HOW-TO.

I hope this helps you.