Unable to connect to oracle via Pentaho. 'oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver' could not be found

Question

Hi I've just installed Pentaho Data Integration v. 5.01 and I'm trying to connect to a database. However, I'm unable to test the connection as I get the error (pasted below).

I have JDK 1.7 installed on the system as well, however I can't seem to locate ojdbc14.jar anywhere.

I downloaded that and pasted it in pentaho's \lib folder but I still get the same error.

Any solutions to this problem?

Error connecting to database [test] : org.pentaho.di.core.exception.KettleDatabaseException: 
Error occured while trying to connect to the database

Driver class 'oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver' could not be found, make sure the 'Oracle' driver (jar file) is installed.
oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver


org.pentaho.di.core.exception.KettleDatabaseException: 
Error occured while trying to connect to the database

Driver class 'oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver' could not be found, make sure the 'Oracle' driver (jar file) is installed.
oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver


    at org.pentaho.di.core.database.Database.normalConnect(Database.java:415)
    at org.pentaho.di.core.database.Database.connect(Database.java:353)
    at org.pentaho.di.core.database.Database.connect(Database.java:306)
    at org.pentaho.di.core.database.Database.connect(Database.java:294)
    at org.pentaho.di.core.database.DatabaseFactory.getConnectionTestReport(DatabaseFactory.java:84)
    at org.pentaho.di.core.database.DatabaseMeta.testConnection(DatabaseMeta.java:2459)
    at org.pentaho.ui.database.event.DataHandler.testDatabaseConnection(DataHandler.java:541)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at org.pentaho.ui.xul.impl.AbstractXulDomContainer.invoke(AbstractXulDomContainer.java:329)
    at org.pentaho.ui.xul.impl.AbstractXulComponent.invoke(AbstractXulComponent.java:139)
    at org.pentaho.ui.xul.impl.AbstractXulComponent.invoke(AbstractXulComponent.java:123)
    at org.pentaho.ui.xul.swt.tags.SwtButton.access$500(SwtButton.java:26)
    at org.pentaho.ui.xul.swt.tags.SwtButton$4.widgetSelected(SwtButton.java:121)
    at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.TypedListener.handleEvent(Unknown Source)
    at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.EventTable.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
    at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
    at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.runDeferredEvents(Unknown Source)
    at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.readAndDispatch(Unknown Source)
    at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.runEventLoop(Window.java:820)
    at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.open(Window.java:796)
    at org.pentaho.ui.xul.swt.tags.SwtDialog.show(SwtDialog.java:375)
    at org.pentaho.ui.xul.swt.tags.SwtDialog.show(SwtDialog.java:301)
    at org.pentaho.di.ui.core.database.dialog.XulDatabaseDialog.open(XulDatabaseDialog.java:115)
    at org.pentaho.di.ui.core.database.dialog.DatabaseDialog.open(DatabaseDialog.java:62)
    at org.pentaho.di.ui.spoon.delegates.SpoonDBDelegate.newConnection(SpoonDBDelegate.java:493)
    at org.pentaho.di.ui.spoon.delegates.SpoonDBDelegate.newConnection(SpoonDBDelegate.java:478)
    at org.pentaho.di.ui.spoon.Spoon.doubleClickedInTree(Spoon.java:2885)
    at org.pentaho.di.ui.spoon.Spoon.access$2300(Spoon.java:332)
    at org.pentaho.di.ui.spoon.Spoon$27.widgetDefaultSelected(Spoon.java:5657)
    at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.TypedListener.handleEvent(Unknown Source)
    at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.EventTable.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
    at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
    at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.runDeferredEvents(Unknown Source)
    at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.readAndDispatch(Unknown Source)
    at org.pentaho.di.ui.spoon.Spoon.readAndDispatch(Spoon.java:1227)
    at org.pentaho.di.ui.spoon.Spoon.waitForDispose(Spoon.java:7368)
    at org.pentaho.di.ui.spoon.Spoon.start(Spoon.java:8673)
    at org.pentaho.di.ui.spoon.Spoon.main(Spoon.java:625)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at org.pentaho.commons.launcher.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:134)
Caused by: org.pentaho.di.core.exception.KettleDatabaseException: 
Driver class 'oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver' could not be found, make sure the 'Oracle' driver (jar file) is installed.
oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver

    at org.pentaho.di.core.database.Database.connectUsingClass(Database.java:474)
    at org.pentaho.di.core.database.Database.normalConnect(Database.java:399)
    ... 45 more
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
    at org.pentaho.di.core.database.Database.connectUsingClass(Database.java:467)
    ... 46 more

Answer 1

Try placing the odbc jar file (eg: ojdbc5-11.1.0.7.0.jar) inside the "data-integration/lib" directory of your installation. Don't forget to restart Pentaho to make it work.

Answer 2

Here's my setup. I had this problem and managed to fix it as follows.

I have SQLDeveloper running on my machine and it works OK, even under VPN. However, I was running Spoon and noticed that it wouldn't work if I use VPN.

I have tried to put Oracle JDBC drivers shipped with SQLDeveloper into Pentaho. That didn't work.

However, I noticed that one big difference between SQLDeveloper and Spoon is that they use different Java runtimes and JDBC Oracle drivers! In particular, my version of SQLDeveloper is running on 32-bit JRE version 1.6.0_11, whereas my system-wide JDK is 64-bit version 1.7.0_03.

I have found the JDBC drivers that SQLDeveloper uses and used them as a replacement for the driver that is shipped with Spoon -- no change.

Then I retargeted Spoon to use the Java runtime used by SQLDeveloper.

I set two environment variables: PENTAHO_JAVA and PENTAHO_JAVA_HOME -- and it works OK now!

For reference, here are my envvars:

PENTAHO_JAVA=C:\opt\sqldeveloper\jdk\jre\bin\java.exe
PENTAHO_JAVA_HOME=c:\opt\sqldeveloper\jdk\jre\

If that is relevant, I am on Windows 7 x64.