Installing jTDS SQL Server JDBC Driver for ColdFusion

Jan 30

Installing jTDS SQL Server JDBC Driver for ColdFusion

We are using MS SQL Server for our main application and we have some issues with the Unicode support on default delivered driver etc. After testing some resources we have decided to change our main SQL JDBC driver which we use to connect to the SQL Server. We have selected jTDS one which is known as a robust solution and having it as free was nice. :)

Here are the steps to install jTDS JDBC driver on a ColdFusion 8 server:

Download the new driver from http://jtds.sourceforge.net In my case the file name was "jtds-1.2.2-dist.zip"
Extract the file and find the jar file such as "jtds-1.2.2.jar".
Copy the jar file (jtds-1.2.2.jar) into ColdFusion lib directory ("...\ColdFusion8\lib" or "...\WEB-INF\cfusion\lib")
Restart ColdFusion.
Create a new DSN in ColdFusion administrator as selecting "other" and put following information
- CF Data Source Name: your data source name
- JDBC URL: jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://yourServerName:1433/yourDatabaseName;
- Driver Class: net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver
- Driver Name: Any name that you prefer (I said jTDS)
- And the rest is as always your username, password etc.

After having these settings, you should be able to connect your SQL Server with your new jTDS JDBC driver.

Have fun!

6 responses to “Installing jTDS SQL Server JDBC Driver for ColdFusion”

greg Says:
Feb 3, 2009 at 9:45 AM Why couldn't you use the SQL Server JDBC driver that comes with Cold Fusion?

Curious...
Oğuz Demirkapı Says:
Feb 3, 2009 at 10:14 AM We were using it. But when we activate Unicode support in CF admin, we have realized that it makes whole servers slower and in a short time CF servers were dying because of our load. We have 5 servers in a clustered env. and it was a show stopper for our projects.

I will blog about the problem also soon ...
alias Says:
Feb 25, 2009 at 11:12 PM Connection verification failed for data source: cold
java.sql.SQLException: Unknown server host name 'ALIAS\sqlexpress'.
The root cause was that: java.sql.SQLException: Unknown server host name 'ALIAS\sqlexpress'.

some help
Mike Brunt Says:
Apr 21, 2009 at 10:30 PM This this solve your performance issue?
Oğuz Demirkapı Says:
Apr 21, 2009 at 11:29 PM Completely!

It is a problem on DataDirect JDBC driver. All our servers runs with jTDS now without any problem. Even faster.
Mike Brunt Says:
May 15, 2009 at 3:11 AM Railo have a version of Railo 3.0 bundled to run on EC2 the details are here http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=1716

Not certain how they handle licensing though.