Question

I’m having a hard time working out how I should be installing the JDBC driver for PostgreSQL on my debian 6.0 server. I have moved the driver .jar into the following directory:

/usr/local/pgsql/share/java/postgresql.jar. 

Then the tutorials talk about using this code:

Class.forName("org.postgresql.Driver");

However, since I am new to postgreSQL I have no idea where I should be putting this line, or if this is even correct.

My question is, short of moving the jar file to this location, what do I actually need to do in order to install the JDBC driver on my postgreSQL installation?

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EDIT: This is my setup:

Server 1:
Tomcat + SOLR

Server 2:
PostgreSQL with JDBC driver

SOLR on server 1 queries postgreSQL on server 2 via the JDBC driver

Answer 1

It is best to install your PostgreSQL driver into tomcat\lib folder. Just copy the driver jar to PATH_TO_TOMCAT\lib

It is not a good idea to add things to the system CLASSPATH because you can end in class loader hell. Here is an example of how you end up in jar / classpath hell.

• Suppose the current app uses postgres 9.1 and you setup the driver on the system CLASSPATH
• You decide to run another app on that box which talks to a newer version of postgres lets say version 9.2
• Because you are using the system classpath app 2 will end up using the old driver because the SYSTEM classpath tends to take precedence over an applications classpath unless the app launcher script sets CLASSPATH=”” to empty out the system classpath or uses a custom class loader that does not do parent-first class loading.

See http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/jndi-datasource-examples-howto.html