java : non-static variable cannot be referenced from a static context Error

Question

The following code is generating an error on the variable con2 saying "non-static variable con2 cannot be referenced from a static context Error." I Googled for a resolution and they are suggesting the variable isn't initalized yet to make the methods available. Am I initializing this incorrectly? I also tried changing things to public but that didn't help either.

import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;

import java.sql.*;
import java.sql.CallableStatement;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.PreparedStatement;
import net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbcx.JtdsDataSource;
import net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver;

class testconnect { 

     private java.sql.Connection con2 = null;

     private final String url2 = "jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://";
     private final String serverName= "SQL01";
     private final String portNumber = "2677";
     private final String databaseName= "App";
     private final String userName = "bob";
     private final String password = "boob";
     private final String selectMethod = "cursor";  

     private String getConnectionUrl2(){
        System.out.println("initalizing jtds");
          //String returnVal = url+serverName+":"+portNumber+";databaseName="+databaseName+";user="+userName+";password="+password+";instance="+instance+";";
          String returnVal = url2+serverName+":"+portNumber+"/"+databaseName+";user="+userName+";password="+password;
          System.out.println("url2: " + returnVal);
          return returnVal;
     }

     public static void main (String[] args) { 
         con2 = java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(getConnectionUrl2());

     } 

} //end class 

Answer 1

No, actually, you must declare your con2 field static:

private static java.sql.Connection con2 = null;

Edit: Correction, that won't be enough actually, you will get the same problem because your getConnection2Url method is also not static. A better solution may be to instead do the following change:

 public static void main (String[] args) { 
     new testconnect().run();
 } 

 public void run() {
     con2 = java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(getConnectionUrl2());
 }