What is the proper way to create a datasource in a spring web application?

Question

I have two ways to create datasource:

1. Inside spring context

   <bean id="dataSource"
   class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
   
   <property name="driverClassName" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" />
   <property name="url" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mkyongjava" />
   <property name="username" value="root" />
   <property name="password" value="password" />
   

2. Tomcat JNDI

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
<property name="jndiName" value="java:comp/env/jdbc/UsersDB"/>

What are the benefits and problems of creating the datasource using spring or using tomcat jndi ?

Answer 1

There is nothing like good practice among this. The good one is the one which is good for use case. They both have pros and cons.

When u have use cases where u are trying to deploy the apps on a server environment where multiple apps share a common datasource or datasource components are managed by the Server administration then probably the best way to use is through a JNDI context. The server has the DataSource kept ready so that the application can directly get that object, bind to itself and use the datasource.

When u have use case where application runs inside a embedded server container or cloud containers where the server also is embedded along the build packs creating datasource with in the application and using them would be a good solution. Also in non web application environments creating datasource would be good.

To summarize, use cases where datasource is non managed by the application better to go for a JNDI context.

Try to figure out what is the deployment model of your application and figure out what is good for u. Also try to use a datasourcepool implementations to improve performance like DBCP, C3P0 or Hikarcp.