Where do I install a jdbc driver on ubuntu?

Question

I'm trying to install the MS SQL JDBC driver on ubuntu to be used with sqoop for Hadoop. I'm totally new to java and linux, so I'm not sure where to extract everything to.

Answer 1

Just put it in the runtime classpath or add its path to the runtime classpath.

How to do it depends on how you're executing the program. If you're using java command in command console to execute a .class file, then use the -cp argument to specify the paths to classes and/or JAR files which are to be taken in the classpath. The classpath is basically a collection of absolute/relative disk file system paths where Java has to look for JAR files and classes.

Assuming that you've downloaded a .zip, you need to extract it and then look for a .jar file (usually in a /lib folder). For starters, it's the easiest to put the .jar in the current working directory and then execute your program (with the Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"); line) as follows:

java -cp .:mysql.jar com.example.YourClass

The . signifies the current path and the : is the separator (which I believe is correct for Ubuntu, on Windows it's ;).

Answer 2

To install the driver, you can:

1. Download the driver from Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11774

2. Unzip and untar it (gzip -d sqljdbc_6.0.7507.100_enu.tar.gz and tar -xf sqljdbc_6.0.7507.100_enu.tar)

3. Install it by copying the correct version into /usr/share/java (It will need to be world readable.) (sudo cp sqljdbc42.jar /usr/share/java/)

4. In the tomcat directory (/usr/share/tomcat8/lib but it could be tomcat7 if you are running a different version.) run sudo ln -s ../../java/sqljdbc42.jar sqljdbc42.jar (with the correct version names from below).
5. If you are using Maven, see Setting up maven dependency for SQL Server

The correct version is as follows: (Under System Requirements)

• Sqljdbc.jar requires a JRE of 5 and supports the JDBC 3.0 API
• Sqljdbc4.jar requires a JRE of 6 and supports the JDBC 4.0 API
• Sqljdbc41.jar requires a JRE of 7 and supports the JDBC 4.1 API
• Sqljdbc42.jar requires a JRE of 8 and supports the JDBC 4.2 API