Dynamically adding a custom JDBC driver

The latest OpenAF versions enable the dynamic loading of custom JDBC drivers.

Let’s take, for example, the CSV JDBC driver. After downloading the jar file to an empty folder let’s also create a sample CSV file (test.csv):

"key";"value"
1; "Item 1"
2; "Item 2"
3; "Item 3"

Then, on an OpenAF script or console execute:

> loadExternalJars(".")
> var db = new DB("org.relique.jdbc.csv.CsvDriver", "jdbc:relique:csv:.?separator=;&fileExtension=.csv", "sa", "sa");
> sql db select * from test
key|  value
---+---------
1  | "Item 1"
2  | "Item 2"
3  | "Item 3"
[#3 rows]

So, what happened:

• The loadExternalJars function tries to dynamically load all .jar files on the path provider (using the OpenAF’s custom class loader).
• When creating the DB object instance, OpenAf will try to find the provided JDBC class driver and will load it through an internal “proxy”, if needed.
• The returned DB object instance will work as the H2, PostgreSQL, etc... drivers (within the limits of the JDBC driver).