Steps to use a Firebird database in Grails

Question

I am trying to connect my Grails application to a Firebird database. I am using: - Grails 2.2.1 - JDK 1.7 - Firebird 2.5.2 - Jaybird 2.2.2 So far, this is what I have done: - I downloaded Jaybird-2.2.2JDK_1.7.zip from http://www.firebirdsql.org/en/jdbc-driver/ - I unzipped this file and copied jaybird-2.2.2.jar into my application's lib folder. - In BuildConfig.groovy, I added `runtime "org.firebirdsql.jdbc:jaybird:2.2.2"` to the dependencies section. - I edited DataSource.groovy as detailed below. The dataSource section: ``` dataSource { pooled = false driverClassName = "org.firebirdsql.jdbc.FBDriver" dialect = "org.hibernate.dialect.FirebirdDialect" username = "SYSDBA" password = "masterkey" } ``` The hibernate section: ``` hibernate { cache.use_second_level_cache = true cache.use_query_cache = true cache.provider_class = 'org.firebirdsql.pool.FBSimpleDataSource' } ``` (I have also had `cache.region.factory_class = 'net.sf.ehcache.hibernate.EhCacheRegionFactory` and `cache.provider_…

Accepted Answer

You are probably missing a required dependency of Jaybird. You need to include the `connector-api-1.5.jar` (in the `lib` folder of the Jaybird distribution) on the classpath. The alternative is to use `jaybird-full-2.2.2.jar` (which includes the classes of `connector-api-1.5.jar`).

EDIT

Out of some curiosity, I installed grails and gave it a go. I initially also got a similar error (using `grails console`) and the stacktrace showed me `java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/resource/ResourceException`. It looks like grails - contrary to the documentation - does not retrieve transitive dependencies (this was a wong, see EDIT 2).

After I explicitly added a runtime dependency on `'javax.resource:connector-api:1.5'`, eg:

```
dependencies {
    // specify dependencies here under either 'build', 'compile', 'runtime', 'test' or 'provided' scopes e.g.

// runtime 'mysql:mysql-connector-java:5.1.22'
    runtime 'org.firebirdsql.jdbc:jaybird-jdk17:2.2.2',
            'javax.resource:connector-api:1.5'
}
```

With this additional dependency it worked. As the `connector-api` is normally provided by an application server, it might be better to specify this one as `provided` instead (you might want to check with your actual deployment environment).

If you need support for retrieval of generated keys (or Gorm might need it), then I'd suggest you also add `'org.antlr:antlr-runtime:3.4'` (as a `runtime` dependency).

EDIT 2

After some additional testing, it looks like first installing the downloaded jaybird libraries into `lib`, and then declaring a dependency will make ivy create a dependency on that local library instead of retrieving it from maven. After removing the jaybird library from the lib folder and removing the `org.firebirdsql.jdbc` folder from my Ivy cache it correctly downloaded it from Maven, including the `connector-api` dependency.

Steps to use a Firebird database in Grails

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