Liferay portlet non-liferay JNDI data source null - oracle

Question

For a Liferay 6.2 custom portlet accessing a non liferay Oracle database we are running into an issue where the data source returned is null.
We have configured the tomcat/conf/context.xml
<!-- Adding custom New non liferay datasource -->
<Resource name="jdbc/NewPool"
auth="Container"
type="javax.sql.DataSource"
driverClassName="oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver"
url="jdbc:oracle:thin:#(DESCRIPTION =
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = dbservernameorip)(PORT = 9999))
(CONNECT_DATA = (SERVER = DEDICATED)
(SERVICE_NAME = dbSIDorservicename)))"
username="user"
password="pwd"
maxActive="35"
maxIdle="10"
maxWait="20000"
removeAbandoned="true"
logAbandoned="true"
minEvictableIdleTimeMillis="3600000"
timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="1800000"
testOnBorrow="true"
testOnReturn="false"
/>
The portlet web.xml contains:
<resource-ref>
<description>Oracle Datasource example</description>
<res-ref-name>jdbc/NewPool</res-ref-name>
<res-type>javax.sql.DataSource</res-type>
<res-auth>Container</res-auth>
</resource-ref>
The code for lookup is:
String JNDI = "jdbc/NewPool"
_log.debug("JNDI Name is: " + JNDI);
_log.debug("dataSource in dbConnect is :" + dataSource);
Context context = new InitialContext();
Context envContext = (Context)context.lookup("java:/comp/env");
_log.debug("envContext in dbConnect is :" + envContext);
try {
DataSource ds = (DataSource)envContext.lookup(JNDI);
Liferay can use the context.xml resource with a similar data source for the Liferay Oracle database successfully.
Is some other wiring needed for Liferay portlet to establish a connection to another database?
The same portlet code works on weblogic without the web.xml change. Similar JNDI data source lookup code and configuration works on vanilla tomcat (without liferay) and a plain war (non liferay portlet) file.
Update:
I have checked db connections on the server with netstat -an|grep dbport. this does not show an established connection.
I have also tried setting the portal.security.manager.strategy=none in portal-ext.properties. This did not work either.
Any insight is much appreciated as we are kind of stuck here.
Thanks!

Answer 1

I just stumbled over this thread in the Liferay Forum which basically says. oput this in your tomcat/conf/server.xml
<GlobalNamingResources>
<!-- Editable user database that can also be used by
UserDatabaseRealm to authenticate users
-->
<Resource auth="Container" description="User database that can be updated and saved" factory="org.apache.catalina.users.MemoryUserDatabaseFactory" name="UserDatabase" pathname="conf/tomcat-users.xml" type="org.apache.catalina.UserDatabase"/>
<Resource name="jdbc/XXX" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource"
maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="5000"
removeAbandoned="true" removeAbandonedTimeout="250" validationQuery="SELECT 1"
username="user2" password="pwd2"
driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
url="jdbc:mysql://localhost/myOtherDb"/>
and this in your context.xml:
<ResourceLink name="jdbc/XXX" global="jdbc/XXX" type="javax.sql.DataSource">
It should do the trick. If you really asking WHY Liferay can find the jndi resource, but not your portlet:
I have no clue...

Answer 2

We also had some problems using the resource and pools. Since we have very few requests to handle and performance were not a concern for our scenario we used a JDBC connection directly without a pool and it's working fine (we are connecting to a MS Sql server)
Connection conn = null;
Statement stmt = null;
ResultSet rs = null;
String url = "jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://host/dbname";
String driver = "net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver";
String db_userName = PropsUtil.get("jdbc.default.username");
String db_password = PropsUtil.get("jdbc.default.password");
try {
Class.forName(driver);
conn = DriverManager.getConnection(url, db_userName, db_password);
String sql = "SELECT * FROM Users";
stmt = conn.createStatement();
rs = stmt.executeQuery(sql);
while(rs.next()){
// DO WHAT YOU WANT
return true;
}
rs.close();
}catch(SQLException se){
//Handle errors for JDBC
se.printStackTrace();
}catch(Exception e){
//Handle errors for Class.forName
e.printStackTrace();
}finally{
//finally block used to close resources
try{
if(stmt!=null)
conn.close();
}catch(SQLException se){
}// do nothing
try{
if(conn!=null)
conn.close();
}catch(SQLException se){
se.printStackTrace();
}//end finally try
}//end try
And it's working fine. Username and password are configured in portal-ext.properties (We are using the same account used for liferay own db)
Hope this helps

Answer 3

I believe we found our issue. It seems like it was a typo.
All references to dataSource need to be changed to ds. There was a code changed. It turned out the the variable name was not changed to ds in code after the ds variable was declared during troubleshooting the issue.
String JNDI = "jdbc/NewPool"
_log.debug("JNDI Name is: " + JNDI);
_log.debug("dataSource in dbConnect is :" + ds);
Context context = new InitialContext();
Context envContext = (Context)context.lookup("java:/comp/env");
_log.debug("envContext in dbConnect is :" + envContext);
try {
DataSource ds = (DataSource)envContext.lookup(JNDI);
_log.debug("dataSource in dbConnect is :" + ds)
We need to test this out. I will post the results after the final test.