com.smartgwt.client.docs

Interface SqlSettings

public interface SqlSettings

SQL Database Settings in server.properties

Although the Admin Console provides a UI to let you to configure database access for DataSources that use Smart GWT's built-in SQL engine, it is also possible to configure these DataSources with manual entries in your server.properties file.

When you manually configure a DataSource like this, you do so by maintaining a set of properties with names structured like this:

   sql.{dbName}.x.y
  

where {dbName} is the name of the database configuration you are providing. Note that this database name is just an arbitrary name for a particular database configuration; many of the default ones provided with Smart GWT are named after a database type, in order to make their intended use more immediately obvious, but this is not by any means a requirement.

For the remainder of this discussion, we will assume we are configuring a database with a name of "MyDatabase".

SQL configuration properties

sql.MyDatabase.database.type
This should be set to one of the supported database types. These are:

hsqldb	HSQLDB 1.7.x and greater
db2	IBM DB2 8.x and greater
db2iSeries	IBM DB2 for iSeries/i5, V5R4 and greater
firebirdsql	Firebird 2.5 and greater
informix	Informix 11.5 and greater
sqlserver	Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and greater
mysql	MySQL 3.2.x and greater
mariadb	MariaDB 5.1 and greater
oracle	Oracle 8.0.5, 8i and greater
postgresql	PostgreSQL 7.x and greater
generic	A generic SQL92 database, with limitations described in this article

sql.MyDatabase.driver
The name of the JDBC driver implementation. This depends upon your database product and version, and the specific JDBC driver you are using (JDBC drivers can usually be downloaded from your database vendor's website). Bearing in mind the caveat that this information can vary by release and JDBC implementation, here are some suggested values for our supported databases:

hsqldb	org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver
db2	com.ibm.db2.jcc.DB2DataSource
db2iSeries	com.ibm.as400.access.AS400JDBCDriver
firebirdsql	org.firebirdsql.jdbc.FBDriver
informix	com.informix.jdbc.IfxDriver
sqlserver	com.microsoft.jdbc.sqlserver.SQLServerDriver or com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver (Microsoft changed the order of "jdbc" and "sqlserver" between the 2000 and 2005 editions of the product)
mysql	com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource
mariadb	org.mariadb.jdbc.MariaDbDataSource
oracle	oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver
postgresql	org.postgresql.Driver

sql.MyDatabase.driver.serverName
The name or IP address of the database server

sql.MyDatabase.driver.portNumber
The port on which the database server is listening

sql.MyDatabase.driver.user
The user to connect as

sql.MyDatabase.driver.password
The user's password

sql.MyDatabase.driver.databaseName
The database to connect to. A "database" in this context is a named collection of tables and other database resources that are somehow grouped together by the database product. The specifics of how this is implemented vary by database. Note that some database products use the terms "catalog" or "schema" to refer to the same concept, and Oracle - although it does also have a concept of catalog - uses the term "SID" for this concept.

sql.MyDatabase.interface.type
Indicates how the JDBC connection will be created or looked up; the value of this setting depends on the capabilities of the particular JDBC driver you are using, and is inherently connected to the value of sql.MyDatabase.driver. The following settings are supported:

dataSource - the driver is an instance of javax.sql.DataSource and should be instantiated by Smart GWT Server
driverManager - the driver is an instance of java.sql.DriverManager
jndi - the driver is an instance of javax.sql.DataSource and should be looked up using JNDI
spring - the driver is an instance of javax.sql.DataSource and should be obtained from the Spring context using bean id defined in sql.MyDatabase.spring.dataSourceBean setting. For example:
sql.MyDatabase.database.type: mysql
sql.MyDatabase.interface.type: spring
sql.MyDatabase.spring.dataSourceBean: springDataSourceBeanId

sql.MyDatabase.driver.url
For configurations where sql.MyDatabase.interface.type is "driverManager", this property allows you to manually enter the URL we use to connect to the database. If this property is not provided, we build the URL from other settings such as sql.MyDatabase.driver.serverName and sql.MyDatabase.driver.databaseName.

Other properties
Different JDBC drivers support different properties to support product-specific quirks and features. You can often specify these properties by embedding them as parameters in the URL used to connect to the database.

Alternatively, any subproperty you set on the "driver" in server.properties is applied to the JDBC driver object via Reflection. For example, the MySQL JDBC driver supports a property "useUnicode", which forces the database to use Unicode character encoding. If sql.MyDatabase.driver is com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource, setting sql.MyDatabase.driver.useUnicode to true means we'll attempt to call setUseUnicode(true) on this class. This would have exactly the same effect as defining the connection URL manually and specifying the parameter useUnicode=true.

Mysql vs MariaDB: there is broad compatibility between these two databases as described in https://mariadb.com/kb/en/library/mariadb-vs-mysql-compatibility/. Within the bounds of that compatibility matrix, you can use database.type 'mysql' and 'mariadb' interchangeably, and likewise with the drivers that you use. However for future compatibility it is recommended that you use database.type: mariadb for MariaDB. This will ensure that as MariaDB implements new features and backompat breaking changes, your application won't run into any gotchas because the Smart GWT server logic will automatically use the right feature set to accomplish documented behavior.

Smartclient properties

sql.mysql.optimizeCaseSensitiveCriteria
This setting affects all MySQL connectors and it is set to true by default. Depending on textMatchStyle case sensitivity in text criteria is achieved by using LIKE BINARY sql comparison operator, which does not use indexed search. Indexes are used with regular "=" comparison operator, which does not ensure case sensitivity. With big amounts of data indexes are critical, so in order to use them and still have case sensitivity supported this setting must be set to true (default). This way we would generate comparison expression like:
<field> = <value> AND <field> LIKE BINARY <value>
where first part ensures efficient indexed search and second part adds case sensitivity to significantly reduced amounts of data. This would be more efficient without indexes as well, cause LIKE BINARY conversion would be performed on less rows anyway.
Setting this property to false would bring back the old behavior, when only LIKE BINARY comparison would be used, which would return same results, but much slower.

sql.MyDatabase.useHavingClause
By default SQL query is generated using traditional "having" clause approach:

select <selectClause> from ... where ... group by <groupClause> having <groupWhereClause>

Setting sql.MyDatabase.useHavingClause to false makes SQL query use subselect approach when main query becomes subselect and then it is filtered in outer "where" clause:

select * from (select <selectClause> from ... where ... group by <groupClause>) work where <groupWhereClause>

This may be overridden by setting OperationBinding.useHavingClause.

sql.forceInsensitivity and sql.MyDatabase.forceInsensitivity
These properties control iContains case insensitive operator behavior. Set to true to force case insensitivity (see below) or false to rely on database LIKE operator directly. At the database level iContains comparison is performed by LIKE operator which may be case sensitive or case insensitive depending on the database or its configuration. For databases with case sensitive LIKE operator we are forcing case insensitivity by changing case on both comparison expression sides:

LOWER(table.column) LIKE LOWER('%Value%')

This approach has a downside of not using indexes, which is not efficient with big amounts of data. So, it is recommended to use direct LIKE comparison when possible, which Smartclient does by default for SQL Server and MySQL drivers, since their LIKE is case insensitive by default. Although it may depend on DB setup, for example in SQL Server it is controlled via database collation. So, configure accordingly to the database setup you're using, which can be done via:

• system-wide sql.forceInsensitive property in server.properties
• Database config specific sql.MyDatabase.forceInsensitive property in server.properties
• DataSourceField.sqlForceInsensitive property for individual fields

sql.aliasLengthLimit and sql.MyDatabase.aliasLengthLimit
These properties override the default table alias length limit when using features like DataSourceField.includeVia and DataSourceField.otherFKs. Default alias length limit is set accordingly to the documentation for supported databases and defaults to 128 characters, except these databases:

firebirdsql	63
mysql	256
mariadb	256
oracle	automatically set to 128 since DB version 12.2 and to 30 for older versions
postgresql	63

In order to support portability across databases it is advised to keep alias length limit at the lowest supported value. Use global setting sql.aliasLengthLimit to apply limit across all DB drivers, or use DB specific setting sql.MyDatabase.aliasLengthLimit (overrides the global one).

sql.postgresql.useILike
Starting with version 12.0, Smart GWT Server supports the use of a Postgres-specific comparison keyword, ILIKE. This keyword natively does a case-insensitive LIKE, so the Smart GWT driver does not have to do what it normally does to enable this kind of comparison, which is to convert the filter value to lower case and then generate SQL like:

WHERE LOWER(someField) LIKE 'united%'

When ILIKE is in use, Postgres is able to make use of indexes, which it does not do when we use the "lowercase both sides" strategy, so this is a potentially significant performance enhancer, depending on your application:

 WHERE someField ILIKE 'United%'

sql.log.queriesSlowerThan
Allows you to specify SQL query execution time threshold in milliseconds, which if exceeded query is identified as "slow" and may be logged under specific logging category. See DataSource.logSlowSQL for more details.

See Also:

DataSourceField.sqlForceInsensitive