How can multiple webapps in the same tomcat instance share database connection pool?

Question

Having in mind that each webapp has its own separate database (but all databases are in the same database server).

The scenario is that I have a multi-tenant saas application - I deploy the same application for each customer. Each customer works on a database that is called db_cid, where cid is the customer id, i.e. a a unique customer identifier.

Working with hibernate.

Answer 1

Have you thought about configuring a JNDI connection in the tomcat (global) context? It can be a pooled connection, as described in JNDI datasource example.

Answer 2

If you need to share ressources between web application you must let the web container manage them, and put them in JNDI. The web application can then get the resources from a JNDI context very easily.

JDBC connection pools are so typical so every web container documents how to set them up.

For stand-alone programs we use Simple JNDI http://www.osjava.org/simple-jndi/ which provides the external configuration which allows us to separate codebase from configuration completely.

Try it, you'll like it :)