ODBC and JDBC Developer’s Guide

20 FileMaker ODBC and JDBC Developer’s Guide
Installing the JDBC client driver
The JDBC client driver is available through a separate installation program on the
FileMaker
Server Web Publishing CD and the FileMaker Pro CD in the folder \xDBC\JDBC
Client
Driver Installer. The driver is packaged as a Java archive file (with the .jar filename extension)
containing a collection of class files. You can also download the latest version of the JDBC client driver (for
Windows or Mac
OS) and PDFs of FileMaker JDBC documentation from www.filemaker.com/jdbc.
For installation instructions, see Installing FileMaker ODBC and JDBC Client Drivers, which is available
as a PDF document on the FileMaker
Pro CD in the folder \xDBC\Electronic Documentation, and in the
folder \English Extras\Electronic Documentation where you installed FileMaker Server.
About the JDBC client driver
The JDBC client driver provides partial support for the JDBC 3.0 specification. For links to additional
details, see www.filemaker.com/jdbc. Also see the
SequeLink Developer’s Reference available at
www.datadirect.com.
The JDBC client driver is designed to work with the Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.4. It is a Type 4 driver
— a native protocol, pure Java driver that converts JDBC calls directly into the network protocol used by
FileMaker. This type of driver offers all the advantages of Java including automatic installation (for
example, downloading the JDBC driver with an applet that uses it). The driver will work with JDK 1.3 and
Java
2 as long as you only use JDBC 1.2 calls in a Java 2 environment
The driver class and main entry point for the driver is named:
com.ddtek.jdbc.sequelink.SequeLinkDriver
Important The JDBC client driver replaces the FileMaker JDBC driver released with a previous version of
FileMaker. If you have previously set up access to a FileMaker data source using the older driver, you’ll
need to re-define access by using and configuring the new driver.
Using a JDBC URL to connect to your database
In Java, most resources are accessed through URLs (Uniform Resource Locators). A JDBC URL is used to
identify the database so the JDBC client driver can recognize and establish a connection with the database.
The JDBC URL consists of three main parts separated by colons:
jdbc:<subprotocol>:<subname>
The first part in the JDBC URL is always the JDBC protocol (“jdbc”). The subprotocol is the driver name
or the mechanism that supports multiple drivers. For the JDBC client driver, the subprotocol is
sequelink.
The subname is the IP address of the machine that is hosting the FileMaker data source.
Registering the JDBC client driver and connecting to a FileMaker data source (an example)
Here is an example using JDBCTest that:
1. Registers the JDBC client driver with the JDBC driver manager
2. Establishes a connection with the FileMaker data source (the JDBC URL is jdbc:sequelink://
17.184.17.170:2399)