Connecting to SQL Server using jTDS

There are a few posts around on the internet explaining how to connect to SQL Server from Java. The most popular is probably using the JDBC driver (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/aa937724), but somewhere I read that for bulk insertions the jTDS driver (http://jtds.sourceforge.net/) is faster. I’m trying to insert some SNOMED related data into SQL Server (started with 2008 Express, but using 2012 Express RC0 now) which requires ~300k insertions.

I wanted to connect to the SQL database using a username and a password. I ended up getting a bunch of connection related errors. Here’s the Java code snippet I was using with connection string details:

String url = "jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://MYPC/MyDB;instance=SQLEXPRESS";
        
try {
    Class.forName("net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver");
    conn = DriverManager.getConnection (url, userName,password);
    System.out.println ("Connection successful");     
} catch (Exception e) {
    System.err.println ("Cannot connect to database server");
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Here are a couple of errors I was getting:

Resolution:

Enable TCP/IP to resolve the first error and restart the SQL Service:

To resolve the second issue, create a new user – cli in my case, and set the ‘Server Roles’ as shown below. You may have to uncheck ‘Enforce password policy’ when creating the new user (depending on the password).