BW 5.X - BW6.X - BWCE - How to connect to an SQL Server database using Windows authentication from a Linux environment

Until recently Data Direct JDBC drivers were embedded in BusinessWorks 6.X and BusinessWorks Container Edition, under the name ‘tibcosoftwareinc’, and were also available as a supplement to the TRA for BusinessWorks 5.X environments.

This is no longer the case starting from BusinessWorks 6.10, BusinessWorks Container Edition 2.9 and BusinessWorks 5.15.1.

This raised some concerns for customers that were using the Data Direct JDBC driver to connect to SQL Server databases using Windows authentication from Linux environments while in the past this was not possible with the native Microsoft JDBC driver.

Connecting to an SQL Server database using Windows authentication from a Linux environment

This article is just to confirm that with the recent version of the Microsoft JDBC driver, embedded in BusinessWorks and BusinessWorks Container Edition, it is now possible to connect to SQL Server databases using Windows authentication from Linux environments without any additional component.

Note that the following JDBC drivers are still available in recent BusinessWorks or BusinessWorks Container Edition versions:

Updating existing applications to use the native Microsoft JDBC driver

The main changes to do are the following:

Change the driver name from : tibcosoftwareinc.jdbc.sqlserver.SQLServerDriver

To : com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver

Change the JDBC URL syntax from :

jdbc:tibcosoftwareinc:sqlserver:// {host}:{port};DatabaseName={name};AuthenticationMethod=ntlmjava;Domain={windows_domain_name}

To :

jdbc:sqlserver://{host}:{port};databaseName={name};domain={ windows_domain_name};authenticationScheme=NTLM;integratedSecurity=true

Connecting to an SQL Server database using Windows Authentication:

BusinessWorks and BusinessWorks Container Edition applications that were developed following the best practice to use properties to set the JDBC driver name and the JDBC URL do not need to be updated, there is only need to update the properties and restart the applications.

Applications where the JDBC driver name has been hard coded in the JDBC Connection Shared Resource will have to be updated and redeployed.

Elements for BusinessWorks 5.X

Starting from BusinessWorks 5.16 it is also possible to connect to SQL Server databases using Windows authentication from Linux environments without any additional component while a recent version of the Microsoft JDBC driver is now included in the TRA 5.13.

BusinessWorks 5.X applications that were developed following the best practices to use Global Variables to set the JDBC driver name and the JDBC URL do not need to be updated, there is only need to update the Global Variables and redeploy the applications.

Applications where the JDBC driver name has been hard coded in the JDBC Connection Shared Resource will have to be updated and redeployed.