Question

Is it possible to run a java jar file from within an Oracle (10g) database? More specifically, I am looking to schedule an oracle job using

dbms_scheduler.create_job(...)

When run, the job would call a Java Application that performs a process involving talking to another application via HTTP, some business logic, then executing a Stored Procedure against the database using JDBC.

Normally, a chron job to do this would work fine, but the java application needs to talk to the database as a given Schema Owner. I can’t store the user-credentials as plain text in the application configuration for various privacy reasons.

In short, I’m wondering if there is a way to schedule a job to execute a jar, passing in the credentials of the user who scheduled the job.

I am unfamiliar with both scheduling Oracle Jobs and running Java Code from an Oracle Database so any pointers in the right direction would be great. I haven’t really been able to find any decent documentation for what I am trying to do either, although I’m sure it has to exist.

EDIT: found some documentation and it looks like I could do something like

DBMS_SCHEDULER.create_program (
    program_name        => 'recurring_java_task',
    program_type        => 'EXECUTABLE',
    program_action      => 'java -jar /path/to/recurring-task.jar',
    number_of_arguments => 2,
    enabled             => TRUE,
    comments            => 'Program to perform cleanup');

and then use
dbms_scheduler.create_job(…)

to create a job for the ‘recurring_java_task’. It seems like Arguments are set using

DBMS_SCHEDULER.SET_JOB_ARGUMENT_VALUE (
   job_name                IN VARCHAR2,
   argument_position       IN PLS_INTEGER,
   argument_value          IN VARCHAR2);

That still doesn’t solve the issue of supplying connection credentials (username/password) to the java application, though.

Answer 1

You can put the Java IN the database. Oracle 10.2 Java Dev Guide. This uses a special JDBC connection string that actually references the internal session. There are special considerations, i.e no GUI rendering, etc. You can also call and wrap this in pl/sql.