Details for an Existing JDBC Compliant Database

If the administrator elects to use an existing database at the site rather than the bundled HSQL database, then the install program will ask for enough information to allow the TQ Server program to successfully access the database and create tables in it. The information required is obtained through a series of panels.

Get Existing DB Details
The first panel obtains the information required to find and load the JDBC driver and determine how to connect to the JDBC compliant database. You should check your database documentation to determine what the appropriate strings should be when accessing the database via the JDBC drivers supplied with the database.

Get Existing DB User Access ID/Password
The second panel provides details on how the Typequick program should log in to the database.

Test Connectivity to JDBC Driver
A program is provided to test the details entered on the two panels above so that problems can be pinpointed. The installation process will put the program in the "data" sub-folder of the location selected as the data folder for files that can be modifed. The test program may be run after the installation completes. The test program will use the supplied details to carry out the test and indicates at each stage how the test is proceeding. The panel presented by the test program after a successful test is shown below.

The text entry fields in the panel allow you to change some of the parameters and retry the test if it fails.

Once the parameters are correct, clicking the "Save" button will force a copy back into the TQ.Properties file that was created during the installation. Using the "Save" button will be sufficient to avoid having to uninstall and then reinstall the program.

Perhaps the most likely problem to be encountered when setting up the connection to an existing JDBC compliant database is difficulty in getting the test program to load the JDBC driver. When the load fails, the panel looks similar to the following:

When the load fails, either the folder selected (shown in the image as the Classpath) for the location of the JDBC drivers is incorrect, or the Classname entry is incorrect. The edit field in the test program allows the Classname entry to be retried, but an error in the Classpath requires an uninstall followed by a reinstall of the whole application on the server machine.