As a developer, you need not know details about how to connect to the database; that is the responsibility of the administrator that sets up the datasource. You most likely fill both roles as you develop and test code, but you do not necessarily have to know how the production data source is configured.

When using Spring`s JDBC layer, you obtain a data source from JNDI or you configure your own with a connection pool implementation provided by a third party. Popular implementations are Apache Jakarta Commons DBCP and C3P0. Implementations in the Spring distribution are meant only for testing purposes and do not provide pooling.

Datasources

DriverManagerDataSource

For development purposes only!

Maven dependency:

<dependency>
	<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-jdbc</artifactId>
	<version>...</version>
</dependency>

Spring config:

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
    <property name="driverClassName" value="${jdbc.driverClassName}"/>
    <property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
    <property name="username" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
    <property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
</bean>

C3P0

Maven dependency:

<dependency>
	<groupId>com.mchange</groupId>
	<artifactId>c3p0</artifactId>
	<version>...</version>
</dependency>

Spring config:

<bean id="dataSource" class="com.mchange.v2.c3p0.ComboPooledDataSource" destroy-method="close">
    <property name="driverClass" value="${jdbc.driverClassName}"/>
    <property name="jdbcUrl" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
    <property name="user" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
    <property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
</bean>

DBCP

Maven dependency:

<dependency>
	<groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
	<artifactId>commons-dbcp2</artifactId>
	<version>...</version>
</dependency>

Spring config:

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
    <property name="driverClassName" value="${jdbc.driverClassName}"/>
    <property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
    <property name="username" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
    <property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
</bean>

BoneCP

Maven dependency:

<dependency>
	<groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
	<artifactId>commons-dbcp2</artifactId>
	<version>...</version>
</dependency>

Spring config:

<bean id="mainDataSource" class="com.jolbox.bonecp.BoneCPDataSource" destroy-method="close">
   <property name="driverClass" value="${jdbc.driverClassName}" />
   <property name="jdbcUrl" value="${jdbc.url}" />
   <property name="username" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
   <property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
</bean>

Container managed datasource

Using jee schema

<xmlns:jee="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee 
                    http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-jee-3.2.xsd">
...
<jee:jndi-lookup id="dbDataSource"
   jndi-name="jdbc/DatabaseName"
   expected-type="javax.sql.DataSource" />

Using bean

<bean id="dbDataSource" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
    <property name="jndiName" value="java:comp/env/jdbc/DatabaseName"/>
</bean>

Example datasource configuration on Tomcat

You can declare the JNDI resource in tomcat’s server.xml using something like this:

<GlobalNamingResources>
  <Resource name="jdbc/DatabaseName" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource"
              username="dbUsername" password="dbPasswd"
              url="jdbc:postgresql://localhost/dbname"
              driverClassName="org.postgresql.Driver"
              initialSize="5" maxWait="5000"
              maxActive="120" maxIdle="5"
              validationQuery="select 1"
              poolPreparedStatements="true"/>
</GlobalNamingResources>

And reference the JNDI resource from Tomcat’s web context.xml like this:

  <ResourceLink name="jdbc/DatabaseName"
   global="jdbc/DatabaseName"
   type="javax.sql.DataSource"/>

Drivers

MySQL

Dependency:

	<dependency>
		<groupId>mysql</groupId>
		<artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
		<version>5.1.9</version>
	</dependency>

Driver: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
URL: jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/databaseName
Hibernate dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.H2Dialect

H2

Dependency:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.h2database</groupId>
  <artifactId>h2</artifactId>
  <version>1.1.102</version>
</dependency>

Driver: org.h2.Driver
Datasource: org.h2.jdbcx.JdbcDataSource
URL: jdbc:h2:path\databaseName
Hibernate dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.H2Dialect

Derby

Dependency:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.derby</groupId>
  <artifactId>derbyclient</artifactId>
  <version>10.9.1.0</version>
  <type>jar</type>
</dependency>

Driver: org.apache.derby.jdbc.ClientDriver
URL: jdbc:derby://localhost:1527/databaseName;create=true
Hibernate dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.DerbyDialect

Postgres

Server configuration:
- Download server in zip from http://www.postgresql.org/
- Extract it to opt dir
- Init database: ./bin/initdb.exe -D /home/username/jpa-db
- Run server: "./bin/postgres" -D "/home/username/jpa-db"
Dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.postgresql</groupId>
    <artifactId>postgresql</artifactId>
    <version>9.2-1002-jdbc4</version>
</dependency>

Driver: org.postgresql.Driver
URL: jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5433/postgres
Hibernate dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect