JDBC Access Considerations

DB2 offers two types of JDBC access, each of which requires a different URL format. The setup process allows you to select a preferred driver and automatically displays the corresponding URL template.

The application driver (COM.ibm.db2.jdbc.app.DB2Driver) requires local client software and a local database instance. Since DB2 runs on a separate (often dedicated) host in most production environments, the local database instance usually contains an alias to the remote database instance. In this configuration, the local database instance uses a DB2-specific protocol to communicate with the remote database instance.

The Type 2 network driver (COM.ibm.db2.jdbc.net.DB2Driver) does not require local client software or a local database. It does require that the DB2 Java daemon (db2jd) be running on the target server. (In most production environments, the target server is a separate host, but the network driver works as well with a local database instance.) This daemon is not started by default, but the database administrator can start it manually or configure it to start automatically when the database instance starts.

The Type 4 network driver (COM.ibm.db2.jcc.DB2Driver) connects directly to the DB2 database.

When using the type 4 driver (in a direct connection) with at least DB2 8.1.2, download the following driver:

com.ibm.db2.jcc.DB2Driver

Later, during the Identity Manager installation process, you will need to copy the following files to the $WSHOME/WEB-INF/lib directory on your application server:

db2jcc

db2jcc_license_cisuz.jar or db2jcc_license_cu.jar

See Notes on Configuring Databases and Downloading Supporting JAR Files for more information.