"No suitable driver" problem with Hibernate3, PostgreSQL 8.3 and Java 5

Question

Hi.

Does anybody know what's going on here:

I run hibernate 3.2.6 against a PostgreSQL 8.3 (installed via fink) database on my Mac OS X. The setup works fine when I use Java 6 and the JDBC 4 driver (postgresql-8.3-603.jdbc4). However, I need this stuff to work with Java 5 and (hence) JDBC 3 (postgresql-8.3-603.jdbc3). When I change the jar in the classpath and switch to Java 5 (I do this in eclipse), I get the following error:

Exception in thread "main" org.hibernate.exception.JDBCConnectionException: Cannot open connection
    at org.hibernate.exception.SQLStateConverter.convert(SQLStateConverter.java:74)
<Rows clipped for readability>
Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: No suitable driver
    at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:545)
    at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:140)
    at org.hibernate.connection.DriverManagerConnectionProvider.getConnection(DriverManagerConnectionProvider.java:110)
    at org.hibernate.jdbc.ConnectionManager.openConnection(ConnectionManager.java:423)

What's the problem here? I cannot see it. Here is my hibernate configuration:

<hibernate-configuration>

    <session-factory>
        <property name="connection.url">jdbc:postgresql:test</property>
        <property name="connection.username">postgres</property>
        <property name="connection.password">p</property>
        <property name="connection.pool_size">1</property>
        <property name="dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect</property>
        <property name="current_session_context_class">thread</property>
        <property name="show_sql">true</property>
        <mapping resource="com/mydomain/MyClass.hbm.xml"/>
    </session-factory>
</hibernate-configuration>

EDIT: The longer, more usual form of the connection URL: jdbc:postgresql://localhost/test has the exact same behaviour.

The driver jar is definitely in the classpath, and I also do not manage to get any errors with this direct JDBC test code:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
  Class.forName("org.postgresql.Driver");  
  Connection con=DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:postgresql://localhost/test","postgres", "p");
}

Answer 1

did you notice that the connection url is incomplete

<property name="connection.url">jdbc:postgresql:test</property>

as opposed to

<property name="connection.url">jdbc:postgresql://localhost/test</property>

Answer 2

You say "work with Java 5 and (hence) JDBC 3 (postgresql-8.3-603.jdbc3)." Maybe this is a faulty assumption.

The download page is confusing to me. It seems to imply that for Java 1.5 you need JDBC3 but it's not 100% clear. I'm not sure why the JDBC4 driver won't work with Java 1.5 (we use a DB2 JDBC4 driver with Java 1.5).

Have you tried the JDBC4 driver with Java 1.5?

Answer 3

I don't see you specifying the driver class in your Hibernate configuration. Try adding the following:

<hibernate-configuration>
    <session-factory>
        .
        .
        <property name="connection.driver_class">org.postgresql.Driver</property>
        .
    </session-factory>
</hibernate-configuration>

Answer 4

One of the new JDBC4 features is automatic loading via the Service Provider mechanism. By including a META-INF/services/java.sql.Driver file in the jar file, there is no longer the need to do Class.forName(""). This only works with the 1.6 JVM.