Is it possible to use a JNDI dataSource read only in Grails?

Question

Hi,

I need to add a JNDI datasource from a legacy database to my Grails (1.2.2) application. So far, the resource is added to my Tomcat (5.5) and DataSource.groovy contains:

development {
    dataSource {
      jndiName = "jdbc/lrc_legacy_db"
    }
}

I also created some domain objects mapping the different tables to comfortably load and handle data from the DB with GORM. But I now want to assure, that every connection to this DB is really read-only. My biggest concern here is the dbCreate- property and the automatic database manipulation through GORM and the GORM classes.

Is it enough to just skip dbCreate? How do I assure that the database will only be read and never ever manipulated in any way?

Answer 1

You should use the validate option for dbCreate.

Answer 2

According to the Grails documentation:

If your application needs to read but never modify instances of a persistent class, a read-only cache may be used

A read-only cache for a domain class can be configured by

1. Enable Caching

Add something like the following to DataSource.groovy

hibernate {
    cache.use_second_level_cache=true
    cache.use_query_cache=true
    cache.provider_class='org.hibernate.cache.EhCacheProvider'
}

2. Make Cache Read-Only

For each domain class, you will need to add the following to the mapping closure:

  static mapping = {
      cache usage:'read-only', include:'non-lazy'
  }