1. Operations Guide
  2. Connecting to a TimesTen Database
  3. Connecting to a Database Using a Connection String

Connecting to a Database Using a Connection String

TimesTen applications require a DSN or a connection string be specified to connect to a database.

For modularity and maintainability, it is better to set attributes in a DSN rather than in a connection string within the application, unless a particular connection requires that specific attribute settings override the settings in the DSN or the default settings.

The syntax for a connection string contains connection attribute definitions, where each attribute is separated by a semicolon.

These precedence rules are used to determine the settings of DSN attributes:

  1. Attribute settings specified in a connection string have the highest precedence. If an attribute appears more than once in a connection string, the first specification is used.

  2. If an attribute is not specified in the connection string, the attribute settings that are specified in the DSN are used.

  3. Default attribute settings have the lowest precedence.

The following sections describe how to use a connection string instead of a DSN:

Using a Connection String in TimesTen Scaleout

In TimesTen Scaleout, you can connect to a specific element by specifying in the connection string the address of the host associated with that element, the database name, and a database user with at least CREATE SESSION privileges.

See Using a Connection String to Establish a Client Connection in the Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database Scaleout User's Guide.

Using a Connection String in TimesTen Classic

You can connect to a TimesTen database without a predefined DSN with any ODBC application or the ttIsql utility if the connection string contains the DataStore, Driver and DatabaseCharacterSet attributes. Define the connection string as follows:

  • The name or path name of the ODBC driver using the Driver attribute.

    • On Windows, the value of the Driver attribute should be the name of the TimesTen Client Driver.

    • On UNIX systems, the value of the Driver attribute should be the pathname of the TimesTen ODBC Driver shared library file (as described in Table 1-1). The file resides in the timesten_home/lib directory.

  • The database path and file name prefix using the DataStore attribute.

  • The character set for the database using the DatabaseCharacterSet attribute.

The following example shows how you can connect providing the Driver, DataStore and DatabaseCharacterSet attributes using a connection string in the ttIsql utility:

Providing the connection attributes on the connect string from a Linux/UNIX client. Note that /disk1/timesten is the timesten_home. 

% ttIsql 

Command> connect "Driver=/disk1/timesten/lib/libtten.so;
DataStore=/disk1/databases/database1;DatabaseCharacterSet=AL32UTF8";

Providing the connection attributes on the connect string from a Windows client:

C:\ ttIsql
Copyright (c) 1996, 2016, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Type ? or "help" for help, type "exit" to quit ttIsql.
 
Command> connect "Driver=TimesTen Client 22.1;
DataStore=/disk1/databases/database1;DatabaseCharacterSet=AL32UTF8";