Accessing NexusDB from Java - java

I am trying to get info from an embedded db called NexusDB using java.
Alternative 1:
I've read in NexusDB website that there is an ODBC driver so I might use it with unixODBC. Then I need to do a JDBC-ODBC Bridge as stated here.
Alternative 2:
Get some sort of application to migrate NexusDB db to another db.
Would like to know one.
I would like to know if anyone ever this this, what's the best solution?
Thanks for reading.

Alternative 1:
Not possible.
unixODBC needs linux drivers and there aren't for nexusDB.
Alternative 2:
Didn't find any.
Solution so far
Writting a small webservice with delphi or get odbc and use that in a small proxy.
In other words, instead of connecting to the nexusdb server you connect to a dedicated application or webservice pass on the information and that app does connect to nexusd and writes the data.

I've had some success running nexusDB under wine.
I was able to set up a WINEPREFIX, follow the instructions here to get at wine's odbc management panel (by default it pipes into unixODBC, and as Macarse noted, that's a dead end), set up a DSN there and test that it could access the data.
The next thing I tried was installing win32 PHP and writing a quick and dirty test using odbc_connect. After wasting a good chunk of time accidently using the linux php binary and wondering why it couldn't use the (inbuilt on win32 ONLY) function odbc_connect, I did get it working.
HINT: To save yourself feeling like banging your head against a brick wall, remember that any attempts to run php scripts in this environment MUST look like this
WINEPREFIX=/home/you/yourprefix wine php c:\phptest.php
NOT
WINEPREFIX=/home/you/yourprefix php c:\phptest.php
The second version will use the linux php binary. Feeling pretty stupid after running the second version a good dozen times AND googling the error some before realising what was wrong - I think I need to get up later if I want to be able to still make things work at 4am :(
(the c:\ path in the above examples can be passed as /home/you/yourprefix/drive_c/whatever if you prefer - relative paths are also fine)
And yes, I know this is a necro post, but it's a pretty niche situation, there isn't a lot of information out there making nexusdb and odbc play nice on linux, and if this information was available to me a few months back when I was googling around and came across this thread it could have saved me a good chunk of time. Hope someone else finds it helpful.

If you connect to Nexus via .NET maybe you can use IKVM to run your Java app and connect through the .NET api?
Otherwise I think your own "solution so far" sounds ok.
Best
Anders

Since it is embedded (and you probably have full access to the machine), what about copying database files to a Windows system, setting up NexusDB and its ODBC driver, then using an ODBC-JDBC bridge on that machine? Once the bridge is running, you can set up a new JDBC-compatible DBMS of your choice, connect, and use a little code to SELECT from NexusDB and insert to your new database.
If you're looking to migrate to another embedded DBMS, I'm using H2 Database for Java, and I've got to say it's really sweet. Both embedded and client/server modes, cross-platform, and really fast for anything under 1M rows. Supports pretty much any feature you'd have in an embedded DBMS and then some.

Related

Database for local storage

I am looking for a database which I can use to store data about certain stock over a number of years. There will probably be a few thousand records. I am writing an application in Java and Clojure which will pull out data from this local database when required to display the data.
I was wondering if anyone knew of a good database to work with for this purpose? I only have experience with MySQL running on the server side.
Which database would be easiest to work with in Clojure and Java for local storage?
Thanks,
Adam
JDK 6 and greater comes bundled with Java DB which good enough for your use case.
For this kind of small-scale application it will almost certainly be easiest if you pick one of the many good embedded Java databases.
My personal top choices would probably be:
H2 - probably the best performance pure Java database overall, and if you believe their benchmarks then it is considerably faster than MySQL and indeed most other databases when run in a single machine environment.
Apache Derby - good all rounder, mature and well supported (Oracle have included a version branded as Java DB in recent JDKs)
After that, you should be able to use them pretty easily using the standard JDBC toolset, so not much different from MySQL.
If you're after a really nice DSL for interfacing with SQL databases with Clojure, you should definitely also take a look at Korma.
I have used Apache Derby for a similar application (although written mostly in Java). They have been running it for almost four years now, and performed more than 60,000 transactions with it with no major problems. Only the occasional bug on my part.
Derby is the same database as JavaDB, however with Derby its easier to keep up on the releases as you can just include it as a dependency, rather than wait on the whim of when the next JDK rev is coming out.
Also, IIRC, JavaDB is only included with JDK, not the JRE.
Depending on the nature of your data and application and your willingness and/or constraints in working with a new database modality, you might also want to consider one of the document-oriented databases, MongoDB or CouchDB. If your data and application are SQL oriented, use one of the databases suggested.

Make calls to a Java object running in a existing JVM with PHP

I am getting into an existing project which implies lots of remote objects communicating together to compute and transfer data.
My goal is to create a web application allowing enduser to input some data and get the results after treatment through the existing distributed application.
Regarding that, I looked for a way to make calls to existing Java objects with PHP, but in most of cases it was about how to create a JVM and instanciate objects directly in PHP, but not accessing to an existing and running JVM.
So, what could be the better way to do that ? I also heard about creating a servlet, but I have no real knowledge about this for the moment, so I am sending a S.O.S in a bottle to the StackOverflow community, hoping someone (and I am sure there is) would have a good answer to that problem :-)
Thank you for your time !
You need to modify the java application. You have to add some kind of remote interface to that app, which can then be used by PHP. If you are inexperienced in java, you're out of luck.
One of the options described above is the servlet, which basically means exposing your java app through a REST or SOAP interface. That may or may not be the simplest solution, depending on your java app. If it is a webapp, you're in luck. You can try using JAX-WS to do that. The downside is that such communication comes with an overhead. If your java app is a command line program, you could use an embedded servlet container such as Jetty or try using WSpublish (built into java 6).
You can give Hessian a try. It is a binary web service protocol that supports both PHP and java. I have used it extensively on java-only environments, but it may work in php-java scenario as well. http://hessian.caucho.com/
As you can see, there are plenty of options, but all of them require knowledge and experience in JAVA and cannot be described in one sentence or two.
The easiest java WS example I have seen can be found here:
http://java.dzone.com/articles/jax-ws-hello-world?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+javalobby/frontpage+(Javalobby+/+Java+Zone)
maybe you could try the PHP/Java Bridge project : http://php-java-bridge.sourceforge.net/pjb/
There's one door into a running java virtual machine: the java management extensions. The door has to be unlocked from the inside, so the application has to offer some managed beans and the jvm has to be started with some parameters.
But once this is setup up properly, then you have an open port where you can read and set data from/on instances or execute methods.
I can't tell exactly how difficult it is to use this connection to the jvm from "other languages", maybe you just have to be able to emulate javas object serialization with php. But it might be offer a solution for your actual problem.

Simple middleware server for control and monitoring

I need a server. A simple one, to control a couple of computers. There are already a couple of programs in the lab, that perform some calculation and monitor tasks. They are executed on these computers. So I need a server to control them - to see the real time data from these computers, I want these programs to upload the calculation data to the server, upload also some files, that come together with this data. So the server needs to have a simple database. I also want to alter some of the calculation parameters in the realtime.
Because, you see, I'm a little tired of opening each computer with the terminal, looking at the process, get the files from each of the computers by ftp, put these files in the corresponding folder on the file storage, writing the schedule, when each program should continue it's work.
Maybe there is some middleware, that I can use for such needs? It should be simple and extensible. i thought of writing such server from scratch, it is not a big problem, but I have a severe time shortage and many other things to do.
And it would be cool, that this server would be developer-friendly. So I could just take it's API and write whatever I need.
I'm using Java, so it would be great, that this server would also "understand" Java. ;-) RMI is cool, but because of the network architecture, I'd prefer to use plain TCP/IP for these needs. Becacuse there is always problem with setting up RMI, when there computers are in differed subnetworks.
Thank you very much for your support in advance! Please help me, otherwise my girlfriend would break up with me, because I don't see her often spending most of my time at the lab... ;-(
I am almost finishing a software like that (actually 3 softwares) the server, the clients and the admin that logs into the server and command the clients.
My problem was specific so I had to go for a custom build from scratch (TCP/IP sockets). Its not hard, just write down the protocol.
If RMI doenst help you, then you must consider making your own proto, and you could exten and add new features later.
Maybe Google Protocol Buffers would help you to build your proto
http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/
Hmm, the two that spring to mind are Jetty and Glassfish. Depends a lot on what you need to do and how you want to go about it. Both are java based.
This seems like a problem for which Bundle-Bee was created for.

Connect to OLEDB data source from Java?

We are trying to connect to a SQL Server instance used by the ACT CRM system. They have managed to lock things down so it isn't possible to connect to the SQL back-end using ODBC (there is some special utility that will add ODBC support that you can install if you purchase the primo version of the software, but that's just crazy).
The recommended method of connecting to theses databases is using an OLEDB connection.
Does anyone have any tricks/ideas/etc... for how to make and use an OLEDB connection from Java?
This doesn't have to be JDBC if that's not possible. All we really need to do is execute a SELECT query that returns two fields and parse those field values out for each row. I have very little experience with OLEDB, so 'use JACOB' might be a good answer, but I'd appreciate some details on what the COM calls would actually have to be.
I know this is old, but could help someone to know how I did it
I described in more detail how to do it Here.
That's not your problem. The problem is the way they have locked down the server. Basically on startup it looks for logins other than ACTUSER and removes them.
You can unlock it pretty easily though, then you will be able to connect in the usual way.
https://serverfault.com/questions/77712/sqlserver-need-to-access-an-act-database-for-data-migration
I've managed to unlock mine but I forget how... I think I started it in single-user mode then did some funny stuff involving decrypting a stored proc in the master database and editing it to remove that "functionality". That in turn involved using SQLTrace to see what commands ACT was sending.
I suggest you ask on Server Fault.
Java can not access OLEDB directly. You need to do this in another language like C++ or C#. Then you can access via JNI or external process. If you does not want write the native part of JNI self then you can use JACOB how you suggest it. But I think an external process take the request seem be simpler.
Or use: http://uda.openlinksw.com/jdbc/mt/jdbc-sqlserver-mt/
They develop all kinds of drivers. I used this company before...
Two ways to solve this issue.
Spawn from java an external proc (c#, c++, etc) that connects to SQLSrv using OLEDB and redirect the stdin, stdout and stderr to your java program.
Create a C# listener on a particular port and have java pass all the requests via a client to that listener.

PHP Communicating w/ Java program

We're come across a problem here at my company and I'm trying to find the best solution.
Software was recently purchased that utilizes a Java program to get the tax for a certain shipment. The site that needs this was written in PHP4. How can I communicate between the two?
It was suggested to use files to communicate but that was horribly slow since the Java program needed to be recompiled every time. So, what is the best solutions to this:
Create a mutli-threaded Java server and use PHP to send/receive the info.
Some other type of file-writing method
Something cool that I dont even know about.
Thanks in advance!
Edit:
I understand the importance of web services but why would this be more efficient that using a mutli-threaded socket-based java server? The only thing connecting to this web services will be my PHP program, no one else. It seems like it might be overkill for my simple task. Am I mistaken? If so, why? Thanks.
Wrap the Java program in a Web Service, and invoke it from PHP. You can even use caching in the Web Service, to optimize performance.
Why not dump the info into a database and have some sort of schedualed job read from it once and a while?
You can always use Quercus which allows you to run PHP in a Tomcat Servlet container.
Web Services is the elegant solution. But in many cases I found much practical to go for a quick-and-dirty solution: start a Java server that communicates using a lightweight communication protocol (none of the heavyweight stuff like XML from Web Services) - example: Apache Thrift. The write a very light client, that takes parameters from command line and writes the output to the console. The client can be in Java or even in other languages, like C++ (Apache Thrift supports that). Then you call the client with system() or with exec() from PHP.
This is not a solution I would ever recommend for production, but it's great for prototyping. Quick and dirty and flexible and extremely modest learning curve (if you already use light-weight communication between your Java processes).
Since you are using PHP4, you may want to just set up a tomcat server that is on a closed network, or just local on the machine of interest, and have it communicate with a servlet, that way you don't have to write a multi-threaded server and deal with creating a communication interface.
If you can upgrade, this page has two other options that may of interest:
http://us3.php.net/manual/en/intro.java.php
Give a look at Quercus
Quercus is Caucho Technology's fast, open-source, 100% Java implementation of the PHP language
I never used it though,
Web Services is the answer. Here's a nice intro link. Your problem is the very reason web services came to the forefront - communication between systems that couldn't ordinarily communicate.
What a web service is essentially going to do is send XML between the PHP and the Java systems. You're going to have to establish an interface for the two, which might be more difficult at the upstart, but you'll reap the benefits later on. In either case, it will be much faster than reading and writing files on the server. Disk I/O are the major bottlenecks on any server.
I may miss something, but if your java program output the needed values, can't you just start the java program from php using exec (http://dk.php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php)
Use the PHP/Java Bridge from sourceforge.net. It is mature, fast and easy to install.

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