Crystal Reports Java makes use of
the Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) to establish connections to data
sources that are specified in the report. Once the connection information has
been retrieved from the JNDI server, Crystal Reports Java uses
the information to establish a JDBC connection to the data source.
Note: If your report is designed
against a JDBC data source using the JDBC driver for Crystal Reports, your
report already contains the information it needs to natively connect to the
JDBC database. In this case, you do not need to perform any of the
configuration steps outlined in this section. You do, however, need to ensure
that the appropriate driver files are available to your web application in
order to connect to the JDBC data source.
To ensure that Crystal Reports Java
can successfully establish a connection when retrieving report data, the JNDI
entries for the required data sources must be correctly configured. For more
information on how to configure a JNDI data source entry, consult the
documentation for your application server and JDBC driver.
To establish a connection, Crystal Reports
Java retrieves the data source name from a Crystal report and performs
a JNDI lookup for the corresponding JDBC data source information. Therefore, it
is important to use the exact data source name that is used in the Crystal
report. To view the data source name, open the report in the Crystal report
designer and use the Database Explorer to display the data source name.
To define a JDBC data source, the recommended
method is to register a JDBC data source with the application server's naming
service. The methods for registering JDBC data sources are specific to the
application server. Refer to the application server's documentation for more
information.