Tomcat, Hibernate, ElasticBeanStalk, RDS, MySql Database connection - mysql

Question

I'm moving my application to AWS ElasticBeanStalk and after spending countless hours trying to get my database connection working, I've repetitively failed.
First attempt,
I currently have an existing RDS database in use which I would like to continue use. I tried to connect to it with a plain old jdbc connection as followed.
<property name="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLInnoDBDialect</property>
<property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</property>
<property name="hibernate.connection.url">jdbc:mysql://masdfwe.czwweehqejmbr.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:3306/project</property>
<property name="hibernate.connection.username">root</property>
<property name="hibernate.connection.password">xxxxx</property>
But found the following exception in the log.
Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: No suitable driver found for jdbc:mysql://masdfwe.czwweehqejmbr.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:3306/project
at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:596)
at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:187)
at org.hibernate.service.jdbc.connections.internal.DriverManagerConnectionProviderImpl.getConnection(DriverManagerConnectionProviderImpl.java:192)
at org.hibernate.internal.AbstractSessionImpl$NonContextualJdbcConnectionAccess.obtainConnection(AbstractSessionImpl.java:278)
at org.hibernate.engine.jdbc.internal.LogicalConnectionImpl.obtainConnection(LogicalConnectionImpl.java:297)
... 125 more
The mysql driver is deff in the lib directory, so I'm not sure why I'm seeing this exception.
Do I need to create a JNDI connection? If so, how do I go about altering the configuration files in tomcat7 on ElasticBeanStalk? Am I suppose to ssh into the ec2 instance, or do I do it into the ElasticBeanStalk instance?
Would I use something like this in my hibernate.cfg.xml file?
<property name="hibernate.connection.datasource">java:comp/env/jdbc/project</property>
web.xml
<resource-ref>
<description>MyDatabase Description</description>
<res-ref-name>jdbc/project</res-ref-name>
<res-type>javax.sql.DataSource</res-type>
<res-auth>Container</res-auth>
</resource-ref>
I'm just not sure where or what I'm suppose to be configuring. Any help would be appreciated, I'm very confused.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You shouldn't have to much about with JNDI to get your RDS connection to work. From your description, I'm also a bit puzzled as to what's not working for you. I've set up my JDBC/RDS connections with no problems, although I've used Spring to access the database, so details are handled by Spring's data sources.
Just an idea: You do have a
Class.forName ("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance ();
to load your JDBC driver in your code?
Good luck!

Answer 2

Your assumption is right. With Hibernate you should be able to use your configuration as is. No need to instantiate driver by name, it applies to Java code without Hibernate.
Your configuration settings look right.
Could it be that the jar with MySQL connector somehow got damaged? Is there anything else in stacktrace?

Answer 3

I had a similar sounding problem with RDS and MySQL. I tried copying the driver's jar file and manipulating the classpath but none of that seemed necessary nor did it help. Eventually, I changed the code where my DataSource gets initialized to pass in my connection string rather than each property individually (e.g., ds.setUser( xxx )). This resolved my issue.
So in the end, my properties file contains these properties:
app.jdbc.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
app.jdbc.url=jdbc\:mysql\://xyz.rds.amazonaws.com:3306/schema?user=username&password=mypassword
And my data source config:
ComboPooledDataSource ds = new ComboPooledDataSource();
ds.setDriverClass( jdbcDriverClassName );
ds.setJdbcUrl( jdbcUrl );
// other ds configuration parameters follow
With this change, I was able to overcome the "driver" exception and connect to the RDS database as expected.