JDBC MySQL connection using Unix Socket

Question

I am using MySQL using the --skip-networking option on Linux.

Trying to connect my J2EE based application (using servlets) to the MySQL database using JDBC.

When was using MySQL with the --skip-networking option disabled, I was connecting to the database as:

Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydatabase","myuser","mypassword");

After having enabled the --skip-networking option, I am trying to connect it as:

Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://localhost/mydatabase","myuser","mypassword");

But this does not seem to work, and I get java.lang.NullPointerException when I try to connect to the database in my application.

After commenting out the --skip-networking option and using the old JDBC statement, I can connect to the database.

Note - I am able to connect to the database via the command line mysql client with the --skip-networking option enabled.

Can anyone tell me how to connect to the database from JDBC? I tried searching for it but could not any satisfactory answer that worked. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The JDBC Driver from the MariaDB project supports Unix domain sockets while remaining compatible with the MySQL Connector/J JDBC driver. Example jdbc url for the MariaDB driver is: jdbc:mariadb://localhost:3306/revmgt?localSocket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

Worth noting that this requires including the JNA library as the MariaDB driver uses domain sockets via JNA internally. I saw speed improvements for CPU bound java processes when using the unix domain sockets. I believe this was largely from the offload of work from the java process to native code freeing up CPU cycles for the already CPU bottle necked java process.