On Liberty, you can easily connect to a database by configuring a <dataSource> element in your server.xml file and using JNDI lookup in your application. For more information about configuring a data source, see Configuring relational database connectivity in Liberty.

However, if your application must access the database using one of the following methods, additional configuration might be required:

• java.sql.Driver.connect()
• java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection()
• java.sql.DriverManager.getDriver()

If you use these methods and the database driver is not packaged in the application, you must configure a shared library for the database driver and reference it on the application <classloader> element.

In the server.xml file, define a shared library for the database driver in the <library> element:

<library id="yourDBDriverLib"> <fileset dir="yourDBDriverDir" includes="yourDBDriver.jar"/> </library>

Reference the shared library by adding a classloader element that points to the library in your <application> element:

<application ...> <classloader commonLibraryRef="yourDBDriverLib"/> </application>