Java desktop application database design

Question

I'm trying to design a desktop application in Java and MySQL. The application deals with orders, invoices, etc. For the moment it doesn't connect to Internet. There are 9 terminals that need to connect with the server to make queries to the database.

Question : How should I make the connections from the client terminals to the server? I guess it`s not by hard coding in every terminal the IP address of the server in the LAN.

Answer 1

If you are intending to create a standalone JAVA application, then simply pass the DBMS server connection properties such as host , port (may not need this parameter if you are walking with default one of MySQL server), username and password then use those arguments to create your connection String url.

As a sample, consider the following main method as your application entry point:

public static void main(String[] args) {

  String host = args[0];
  String port = args[1];
  String username = args[2];
  String password = args[3];
  String dbName = "db_name";
  try {
    // Load the MySQL driver
    Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");

    // setup the connection with the DB.
    Connection connect = DriverManager
      .getConnection("jdbc:mysql://" 
      + host
      + ":" + port
      + "/" + dbName + "?"
      + "?user=" + username + "&password=" + password);

    // Use that conncetion

} catch (Exception e) {
  // Catch connection exceptions
} finally {
  // Close connection
}

Then the invocation from command line would be with a packaged artifact:

java -jar packaged-application.jar localhost 3306 root rootroot

Or using your the class where your main resides:

java MainClass localhost 3306 root rootroot