Creating and configuring a connection

• 1: JDBC connection properties
• 2: Setting and getting connection property values
• 3: Configuring TLS for JDBC clients
• 4: Setting and returning a client connection label
• 5: Setting the locale for JDBC sessions
• 6: Changing the transaction isolation level
• 7: JDBC connection pools
• 8: Load balancing in JDBC
• 9: JDBC connection failover

import java.sql.*;

import java.util.Properties;

jdbc:vertica://VerticaHost:portNumber/databaseName

import java.sql.*;
import java.util.Properties;

public class VerySimpleVerticaJDBCExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        /*
         * If your client needs to run under a Java 5 JVM, It will use the older
         * JDBC 3.0-compliant driver, which requires you manually load the
         * driver using Class.forname
         */
        /*
         * try { Class.forName("com.vertica.jdbc.Driver"); } catch
         * (ClassNotFoundException e) { // Could not find the driver class.
         * Likely an issue // with finding the .jar file.
         * System.err.println("Could not find the JDBC driver class.");
         * e.printStackTrace(); return; // Bail out. We cannot do anything
         * further. }
         */
        Properties myProp = new Properties();
        myProp.put("user", "dbadmin");
        myProp.put("password", "vertica");
        myProp.put("loginTimeout", "35");
        myProp.put("KeystorePath", "c:/keystore/keystore.jks");
     myProp.put("KeystorePassword", "keypwd");
     myProp.put("TrustStorePath", "c:/truststore/localstore.jks");
     myProp.put("TrustStorePassword", "trustpwd");
        Connection conn;
        try {
            conn = DriverManager.getConnection(
                    "jdbc:vertica://V_vmart_node0001.example.com:5433/vmart", myProp);
            System.out.println("Connected!");
            conn.close();
        } catch (SQLTransientConnectionException connException) {
            // There was a potentially temporary network error
            // Could automatically retry a number of times here, but
            // instead just report error and exit.
            System.out.print("Network connection issue: ");
            System.out.print(connException.getMessage());
            System.out.println(" Try again later!");
            return;
        } catch (SQLInvalidAuthorizationSpecException authException) {
            // Either the username or password was wrong
            System.out.print("Could not log into database: ");
            System.out.print(authException.getMessage());
            System.out.println(" Check the login credentials and try again.");
            return;
        } catch (SQLException e) {
            // Catch-all for other exceptions
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

1 - JDBC connection properties

You use connection properties to configure the connection between your JDBC client application and your Vertica database. The properties provide the basic information about the connections, such as the server name and port number to use to connect to your database. They also let you tune the performance of your connection and enable logging.

You can set a connection property in one of the following ways:

• Include the property name and value as part of the connection string you pass to the method DriverManager.getConnection().

• Set the properties in a Properties object, and then pass it to the method DriverManager.getConnection().

• Use the method VerticaConnection.setProperty(). With this approach, you can change only those connection properties that remain changeable after the connection has been established.

Also, some standard JDBC connection properties have getters and setters on the Connection interface, such as Connection.setAutoCommit().

Connection properties

The properties in the following table can only be set before you open the connection to the database. Two of them are required for every connection.

OAuth connection properties

The following connection properties pertain to OAuth in JDBC.

Timeout properties

With the following parameters, you can specify various timeouts for each step and the overall connection of JDBC to your Vertica database.

The relationship between these properties and the role they play when JDBC attempts to connect to a Vertica database is illustrated in the following diagram:

General properties

The following properties can be set after the connection is established. None of these properties are required.

Logging properties

The properties that control client logging must be set before the connection is opened. None of these properties are required, and none can be changed after the Connection object has been instantiated.

Kerberos connection parameters

Use the following parameters to set the service and host name principals for client authentication using Kerberos.

Routable connection API connection parameters

Use the following parameters to set properties to enable and configure the connection for Routable Connection lookups.

For information about manipulating these attributes, see Setting and getting connection property values.

2 - Setting and getting connection property values

You can set a connection property in one of the following ways:

• Include the property name and value as part of the connection string you pass to the method DriverManager.getConnection().

• Set the properties in a Properties object, and then pass it to the method DriverManager.getConnection().

• Use the method VerticaConnection.setProperty(). With this approach, you can change only those connection properties that remain changeable after the connection has been established.

Also, some standard JDBC connection properties have getters and setters on the Connection interface, such as Connection.setAutoCommit().

Setting properties when connecting

When creating a connection to Vertica, you can set connection properties by:

• Specifying them in the connection string.

• Modifying the Properties object passed to getConnection().

Connection string properties

You can specify connection properties in the connection string with the same URL parameter format used for usernames and passwords. For example, the following string enables a TLS connection:

"jdbc:vertica://VerticaHost:5433/db?user=UserName&password=Password&TLSmode=require"

Setting a host name using the setProperty() method overrides the host name set in a connection string. If this occurs, Vertica might not be able to connect to a host. For example, using the connection string above, the following overrides the VerticaHost name:

Properties props = new Properties();
props.setProperty("dataSource", dataSourceURL);
props.setProperty("database", database);
props.setProperty("user", user);
props.setProperty("password", password);
ps.setProperty("jdbcDriver", jdbcDriver);
props.setProperty("hostName", "NonVertica_host");

However, if a new connection or override connection is needed, you can enter a valid host name in the hostname properties object.

The NonVertica_host hostname overrides VerticaHost name in the connection string. To avoid this issue, comment out the props.setProperty("hostName", "NonVertica_host");line:

//props.setProperty("hostName", "NonVertica_host");

Properties object

To set connection properties with the Properties object passed to the getConnection() call:

1. Import the java.util.Properties class to instantiate a Properties object.

2. Use the put() method to add name-value pairs to the object.

Properties myProp = new Properties();
myProp.put("user", "ExampleUser");
myProp.put("password", "password123");
myProp.put("LoginTimeout", "35");
Connection conn;
try {
    conn = DriverManager.getConnection(
        "jdbc:vertica://VerticaHost:/ExampleDB", myProp);
} catch (SQLException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Getting and setting properties after connecting

After you establish a connection with Vertica, you can use the VerticaConnection methods getProperty() and setProperty() to set the values of some connection properties, respectively.

The VerticaConnection.getProperty() method lets you get the value of some connection properties. Use this method to change the value for properties that can be set after you establish a connection with Vertica.

Because these methods are Vertica-specific, you must cast your Connection object to the VerticaConnection interface with one of the following methods:

• Import the Connection object into your client application.

• Use a fully-qualified reference: com.vertica.jdbc.VerticaConnection.

The following example demonstrates getting and setting the value of the ReadOnly property.

import java.sql.*;
import java.util.Properties;
import com.vertica.jdbc.*;

public class SetConnectionProperties {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Note: If your application needs to run under Java 5, you need to
        // load the JDBC driver using Class.forName() here.
        Properties myProp = new Properties();
        myProp.put("user", "ExampleUser");
        myProp.put("password", "password123");
        // Set ReadOnly to true initially
        myProp.put("ReadOnly", "true");
        Connection conn;
        try {
            conn = DriverManager.getConnection(
                            "jdbc:vertica://VerticaHost:5433/ExampleDB",
                            myProp);
            // Show state of the ReadOnly property. This was set at the
            // time the connection was created.
            System.out.println("ReadOnly state: "
                            + ((VerticaConnection) conn).getProperty(
                                            "ReadOnly"));

            // Change it and show it again
            ((VerticaConnection) conn).setProperty("ReadOnly", false);
            System.out.println("ReadOnly state is now: " +
                             ((VerticaConnection) conn).getProperty(
                                             "ReadOnly"));
            conn.close();
        } catch (SQLException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

When run, the example prints the following on the standard output:

ReadOnly state: true
ReadOnly state is now: false

3 - Configuring TLS for JDBC clients

To configure TLS for JDBC clients:

• Configure Vertica for client-server TLS.

• Set the keystore and truststore properties.

• Set the TLSmode parameter.

• (Optional) Run the SSL debug utility to test your configuration.

Setting keystore/truststore properties

You can set the keystore and truststore properties in the following ways, each with their own pros and cons:

• At the driver level.

• At the JVM level.

Driver-level configuration

If you use tools like DbVizualizer with many connections, configure the keystore and truststore with the JDBC connection properties. This does, however, expose these values in the connection string:

• KeyStorePath

• KeyStorePassword

• TrustStorePath

• TrustStorePassword

For example:

Properties props = new Properties();
props.setProperty("KeyStorePath", keystorepath);
props.setProperty("KeyStorePassword", keystorepassword);
props.setProperty("TrustStorePath", truststorepath);
props.setProperty("TrustStorePassword", truststorepassword);

JVM-level configuration

Setting keystore and truststore parameters at the JVM level excludes them from the connection string, which may be more accommodating for environments with more stringent security requirements:

• javax.net.ssl.keyStore

• javax.net.ssl.trustStore

• javax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword

• javax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword

For example:

System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.keyStore","clientKeyStore.key");
System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.trustStore","clientTrustStore.key");
System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword","new_keystore_password")
System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword","new_truststore_password");

Set the TLSmode connection property

You can set the TLSmode connection property to determine how certificates are handled. TLSmode is disabled by default.

TLSmode identifies the security level that Vertica applies to the JDBC connection. Vertica must be configured to handle TLS connections before you can establish an encrypted connection to it. See TLS protocol for details. Valid values are:

• disable: JDBC connects using plain text and implements no security measures.

• prefer: JDBC connects using TLS. If the server does not support TLS, JDBC connects with a channel that is not encrypted. This is the default mode.

• require: JDBC connects using TLS without verifying the CA certificate.

• verify-ca: JDBC connects using TLS and confirms that the server certificate has been signed by the certificate authority. This setting is equivalent to the deprecated ssl=true property.

• verify-full: JDBC connects using TLS, confirms that the server certificate has been signed by the certificate authority, and verifies that the host name matches the name provided in the server certificate.

If this property and the SSL property are set, this property takes precedence.

For example, to configure JDBC to connect to the server with TLS without verifying the CA certificate, you can set the TLSmode property to 'require' with the method VerticaConnection.setProperty():

Properties props = new Properties();
props.setProperty("TLSmode", "verify-full");

Run the SSL debug utility

After configuring TLS, you can run the following for a debugging utility:

$ java -Djavax.net.debug=ssl

You can use several debug specifiers (options) with the debug utility. The specifiers help narrow the scope of the debugging information that is returned. For example, you could specify one of the options that prints handshake messages or session activity.

For information on the debug utility and its options, see Debugging Utilities in the Oracle document, JSSE Reference Guide.

For information on interpreting debug information, refer to the Oracle document, Debugging SSL/TLS Connections.

4 - Setting and returning a client connection label

The JDBC Client has a method to set and return the client connection label: getClientInfo() and setClientInfo(). You can use these methods with the SQL Functions GET_CLIENT_LABEL and SET_CLIENT_LABEL.

When you use these two methods, make sure you pass the string value APPLICATIONNAME to both the setter and getter methods.

Use setClientInfo() to create a client label, and use getClientInfo() to return the client label:

import java.sql.*;
import java.util.Properties;

public class ClientLabelJDBC {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Properties myProp = new Properties();
        myProp.put("user", "dbadmin");
        myProp.put("password", "");
        myProp.put("loginTimeout", "35");
        Connection conn;
        try {
            conn = DriverManager.getConnection(
                    "jdbc:vertica://example.com:5433/mydb", myProp);
            System.out.println("Connected!");
            conn.setClientInfo("APPLICATIONNAME", "JDBC Client - Data Load");
            System.out.println("New Conn label: " + conn.getClientInfo("APPLICATIONNAME"));
            conn.close();
        } catch (SQLTransientConnectionException connException) {
            // There was a potentially temporary network error
            // Could automatically retry a number of times here, but
            // instead just report error and exit.
            System.out.print("Network connection issue: ");
            System.out.print(connException.getMessage());
            System.out.println(" Try again later!");
            return;
        } catch (SQLInvalidAuthorizationSpecException authException) {
            // Either the username or password was wrong
            System.out.print("Could not log into database: ");
            System.out.print(authException.getMessage());
            System.out.println(" Check the login credentials and try again.");
            return;
        } catch (SQLException e) {
            // Catch-all for other exceptions
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

When you run this method, it prints the following result to the standard output:

Connected!
New Conn Label: JDBC Client - Data Load

5 - Setting the locale for JDBC sessions

You set the locale for a connection while opening it by including a SET LOCALE statement in the ConnSettings property, or by executing a SET LOCALE statement at any time after opening the connection. Changing the locale of a Connection object affects all of the Statement objects you instantiated using it.

You can get the locale by executing a SHOW LOCALE query. The following example demonstrates setting the locale using ConnSettings and executing a statement, as well as getting the locale:

import java.sql.*;
import java.util.Properties;

public class GetAndSetLocale {
    public static void main(String[] args) {

     // If running under a Java 5 JVM, you need to load the JDBC driver
     // using Class.forname here

     Properties myProp = new Properties();
        myProp.put("user", "ExampleUser");
        myProp.put("password", "password123");

        // Set Locale to true en_GB on connection. After the connection
        // is established, the JDBC driver runs the statements in the
        // ConnSettings property.
        myProp.put("ConnSettings", "SET LOCALE TO en_GB");
        Connection conn;
        try {
            conn = DriverManager.getConnection(
                            "jdbc:vertica://VerticaHost:5433/ExampleDB",
                            myProp);

            // Execute a query to get the locale. The results should
            // show "en_GB" as the locale, since it was set by the
            // conn settings property.
            Statement stmt = conn.createStatement();
            ResultSet rs = null;
            rs = stmt.executeQuery("SHOW LOCALE");
            System.out.print("Query reports that Locale is set to: ");
            while (rs.next()) {
                System.out.println(rs.getString(2).trim());
            }

            // Now execute a query to set locale.
            stmt.execute("SET LOCALE TO en_US");

            // Run query again to get locale.
            rs = stmt.executeQuery("SHOW LOCALE");
            System.out.print("Query now reports that Locale is set to: ");
            while (rs.next()) {
                System.out.println(rs.getString(2).trim());
            }
            // Clean up
            conn.close();
        } catch (SQLException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Running the above example displays the following on the system console:

Query reports that Locale is set to: en_GB (LEN)
Query now reports that Locale is set to: en_US (LEN)

Notes:

• JDBC applications use a UTF-16 character set encoding and are responsible for converting any non-UTF-16 encoded data to UTF-16. Failing to convert the data can result in errors or the data being stored incorrectly.

• The JDBC driver converts UTF-16 data to UTF-8 when passing to the Vertica server and converts data sent by Vertica server from UTF-8 to UTF-16 .

6 - Changing the transaction isolation level

Changing the transaction isolation level lets you choose how transactions prevent interference from other transactions. By default, the JDBC driver matches the transaction isolation level of the Vertica server. The Vertica default transaction isolation level is READ_COMMITTED, which means any changes made by a transaction cannot be read by any other transaction until after they are committed. This prevents a transaction from reading data inserted by another transaction that is later rolled back.

Vertica also supports the SERIALIZABLE transaction isolation level. This level locks tables to prevent queries from having the results of their WHERE clauses changed by other transactions. Locking tables can have a performance impact, since only one transaction is able to access the table at a time.

A transaction retains its isolation level until it completes, even if the session's isolation level changes during the transaction. Vertica internal processes (such as the Tuple Mover and refresh operations) and DDL operations always run at the SERIALIZABLE isolation level to ensure consistency.

You can change the transaction isolation level connection property after the connection has been established using the Connection object's setter (setTransactionIsolation()) and getter (getTransactionIsolation()). The value for transaction isolation property is an integer. The Connection interface defines constants to help you set the value in a more intuitive manner:

The following example demonstrates setting the transaction isolation level to SERIALIZABLE.

import java.sql.*;
import java.util.Properties;

public class SetTransactionIsolation {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Properties myProp = new Properties();
        myProp.put("user", "ExampleUser");
        myProp.put("password", "password123");
        Connection conn;
        try {
            conn = DriverManager.getConnection(
                            "jdbc:vertica://VerticaHost:5433/ExampleDB",
                            myProp);
            // Get default transaction isolation
            System.out.println("Transaction Isolation Level: "
                            + conn.getTransactionIsolation());
            // Set transaction isolation to SERIALIZABLE
            conn.setTransactionIsolation(Connection.TRANSACTION_SERIALIZABLE);
            // Get the transaction isolation again
            System.out.println("Transaction Isolation Level: "
                            + conn.getTransactionIsolation());
            conn.close();
        } catch (SQLException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Running the example results in the following being printed out to the console:

Transaction Isolation Level: 2Transaction Isolation Level: 8

7 - JDBC connection pools

A pooling data source uses a collection of persistent connections in order to reduce the overhead of repeatedly opening network connections between the client and server. Opening a new connection for each request is more costly for both the server and the client than keeping a small pool of connections open constantly, ready to be used by new requests. When a request comes in, one of the pre-existing connections in the pool is assigned to it. Only if there are no free connections in the pool is a new connection created. Once the request is complete, the connection returns to the pool and waits to service another request.

The Vertica JDBC driver supports connection pooling as defined in the JDBC 4.0 standard. If you are using a J2EE-based application server in conjunction with Vertica, it should already have a built-in data pooling feature. All that is required is that the application server work with the PooledConnection interface implemented by Vertica's JDBC driver. An application server's pooling feature is usually well-tuned for the works loads that the server is designed to handle. See your application server's documentation for details on how to work with pooled connections. Normally, using pooled connections should be transparent in your code—you will just open connections and the application server will worry about the details of pooling them.

If you are not using an application server, or your application server does not offer connection pooling that is compatible with Vertica, you can use a third-party pooling library, such as the open-source c3p0 or DBCP libraries, to implement connection pooling.

8 - Load balancing in JDBC

Native connection load balancing

Native connection load balancing helps spread the overhead caused by client connections on the hosts in the Vertica database. Both the server and the client must enable native connection load balancing. If enabled by both, then when the client initially connects to a host in the database, the host picks a host to handle the client connection from a list of the currently up hosts in the database, and informs the client which host it has chosen.

If the initially-contacted host does not choose itself to handle the connection, the client disconnects, then opens a second connection to the host selected by the first host. The connection process to this second host proceeds as usual—if SSL is enabled, then SSL negotiations begin, otherwise the client begins the authentication process. See About native connection load balancing for details.

To enable native load balancing on your client, set the ConnectionLoadBalance connection parameter to true. The following example demonstrates:

• Connecting to the database several times with native connection load balancing enabled.

• Fetching the name of the node handling the connection from the V_MONITOR.CURRENT_SESSION system table.

import java.sql.*;
import java.util.Properties;
import java.sql.*;
import java.util.Properties;

public class JDBCLoadingBalanceExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Properties myProp = new Properties();
        myProp.put("user", "dbadmin");
        myProp.put("password", "example_password123");
        myProp.put("loginTimeout", "35");
        myProp.put("ConnectionLoadBalance", "1");
        Connection conn;

        for (int x = 1; x <= 4; x++) {
            try {
                System.out.print("Connect attempt #" + x + "...");
                conn = DriverManager.getConnection(
                    "jdbc:vertica://node01.example.com:5433/vmart", myProp);
                Statement stmt = conn.createStatement();
                // Set the load balance policy to round robin before testing the database's load balancing.
                stmt.execute("SELECT SET_LOAD_BALANCE_POLICY('ROUNDROBIN');");
                // Query system to table to see what node we are connected to. Assume a single row
                // in response set.
                ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("SELECT node_name FROM v_monitor.current_session;");
                rs.next();
                System.out.println("Connected to node " + rs.getString(1).trim());
                conn.close();
            } catch (SQLTransientConnectionException connException) {
                // There was a potentially temporary network error
                // Could automatically retry a number of times here, but
                // instead just report error and exit.
                System.out.print("Network connection issue: ");
                System.out.print(connException.getMessage());
                System.out.println(" Try again later!");
                return;
            } catch (SQLInvalidAuthorizationSpecException authException) {
                // Either the username or password was wrong
                System.out.print("Could not log into database: ");
                System.out.print(authException.getMessage());
                System.out.println(" Check the login credentials and try again.");
                return;
            } catch (SQLException e) {
                // Catch-all for other exceptions
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }
}

Running the previous example produces the following output:

Connect attempt #1...Connected to node v_vmart_node0002
Connect attempt #2...Connected to node v_vmart_node0003
Connect attempt #3...Connected to node v_vmart_node0001
Connect attempt #4...Connected to node v_vmart_node0002

Hostname-based load balancing

You can load balance workloads by resolving a single hostname to multiple IP addresses. When you specify the hostname for the DriverManager.getConnection() method, the hostname resolves to a random listed IP address from the each connection.

For example, the hostname verticahost.example.com has the following entries in etc/hosts:

192.0.2.0 verticahost.example.com
192.0.2.1 verticahost.example.com
192.0.2.2 verticahost.example.com

Specifying verticahost.example.com as the connection for DriverManager.getConnection() randomly resolves to one of the listed IP address.

9 - JDBC connection failover

If a client application attempts to connect to a host in the Vertica cluster that is down, the connection attempt fails when using the default connection configuration. This failure usually returns an error to the user. The user must either wait until the host recovers and retry the connection or manually edit the connection settings to choose another host.

Due to Vertica Analytic Database's distributed architecture, you usually do not care which database host handles a client application's connection. You can use the client driver's connection failover feature to prevent the user from getting connection errors when the host specified in the connection settings is unreachable. The JDBC driver gives you several ways to let the client driver automatically attempt to connect to a different host if the one specified in the connection parameters is unreachable:

• Configure your DNS server to return multiple IP addresses for a host name. When you use this host name in the connection settings, the client attempts to connect to the first IP address from the DNS lookup. If the host at that IP address is unreachable, the client tries to connect to the second IP, and so on until it either manages to connect to a host or it runs out of IP addresses.

• Supply a list of backup hosts for the client driver to try if the primary host you specify in the connection parameters is unreachable.

• (JDBC only) Use driver-specific connection properties to manage timeouts before attempting to connect to the next node.

For all methods, the process of failover is transparent to the client application (other than specifying the list of backup hosts, if you choose to use the list method of failover). If the primary host is unreachable, the client driver automatically tries to connect to other hosts.

Failover only applies to the initial establishment of the client connection. If the connection breaks, the driver does not automatically try to reconnect to another host in the database.

Choosing a failover method

You usually choose to use one of the two failover methods. However, they do work together. If your DNS server returns multiple IP addresses and you supply a list of backup hosts, the client first tries all of the IPs returned by the DNS server, then the hosts in the backup list.

The DNS method of failover centralizes the configuration client failover. As you add new nodes to your Vertica Analytic Database cluster, you can choose to add them to the failover list by editing the DNS server settings. All client systems that use the DNS server to connect to Vertica Analytic Database automatically use connection failover without having to change any settings. However, this method does require administrative access to the DNS server that all clients use to connect to the Vertica Analytic Database cluster. This may not be possible in your organization.

Using the backup server list is easier than editing the DNS server settings. However, it decentralizes the failover feature. You may need to update the application settings on each client system if you make changes to your Vertica Analytic Database cluster.

Using DNS failover

To use DNS failover, you need to change your DNS server's settings to map a single host name to multiple IP addresses of hosts in your Vertica Analytic Database cluster. You then have all client applications use this host name to connect to Vertica Analytic Database.

You can choose to have your DNS server return as many IP addresses for the host name as you want. In smaller clusters, you may choose to have it return the IP addresses of all of the hosts in your cluster. However, for larger clusters, you should consider choosing a subset of the hosts to return. Otherwise there can be a long delay as the client driver tries unsuccessfully to connect to each host in a database that is down.

Using the backup host list

To enable backup list-based connection failover, your client application has to specify at least one IP address or host name of a host in the BackupServerNode parameter. The host name or IP can optionally be followed by a colon and a port number. If not supplied, the driver defaults to the standard Vertica port number (5433). To list multiple hosts, separate them by a comma.

The following example demonstrates setting the BackupServerNode connection parameter to specify additional hosts for the connection attempt. The connection string intentionally has a non-existent node, so that the initial connection fails. The client driver has to resort to trying the backup hosts to establish a connection to Vertica.

import java.sql.*;
import java.util.Properties;

public class ConnectionFailoverExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Assume using JDBC 4.0 driver on JVM 6+. No driver loading needed.
        Properties myProp = new Properties();
        myProp.put("user", "dbadmin");
        myProp.put("password", "vertica");
        // Set two backup hosts to be used if connecting to the first host
        // fails. All of these hosts will be tried in order until the connection
        // succeeds or all of the connections fail.
        myProp.put("BackupServerNode", "VerticaHost02,VerticaHost03");
        Connection conn;
        try {
            // The connection string is set to try to connect to a known
            // bad host (in this case, a host that never existed).
            // The database name is optional.
            conn = DriverManager.getConnection(
                    "jdbc:vertica://BadVerticaHost:5433/vmart", myProp);
            System.out.println("Connected!");
            // Query system to table to see what node we are connected to.
            // Assume a single row in response set.
            Statement stmt = conn.createStatement();
            ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery(
                    "SELECT node_name FROM v_monitor.current_session;");
            rs.next();
            System.out.println("Connected to node " + rs.getString(1).trim());
            // Done with connection.
            conn.close();
        } catch (SQLException e) {
            // Catch-all for other exceptions
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

When run, the example outputs output similar to the following on the system console:

Connected!
Connected to node v_vmart_node0002

Notice that the connection was made to the first node in the backup list (node 2).

Specifying connection timeouts

LoginTimeout controls the timeout for JDBC to establish establish a TCP connection with a node and log in to Vertica.

LoginNodeTimeout controls the timeout for JDBC to log in to the Vertica database. After the specified timeout, JDBC attempts to connect to the "next" node, which is determined by either the connection property BackupServerNode or DNS resolution. This is useful if the node is up, but something is wrong with the Vertica process.

LoginNetworkTimeout controls the timeout for JDBC to establish a TCP connection to a Vertica node. If you do not set this connection property, if the node to which the JDBC client attempts to connect is down, the JDBC client will wait "indefinitely," but practically, the system default timeout of 70 seconds is used. A typical use case for LoginNetworkTimeout is to let JDBC connect to another node if the current Vertica node is down for maintenance and modifying the JDBC application's connection string is infeasible.

NetworkTimeout controls the timeout for Vertica to respond to a request from a client after it has established a connection and logged in to the database.

To set these parameters in a connection string:

# LoginTimeout is 30 seconds, LoginNodeTimeout is 10 seconds, LoginNetworkTimeout is 2 seconds, NetworkTimeout is 0.5 seconds
Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:vertica://VerticaHost:5433/verticadb?user=dbadmin&loginTimeout=30&loginNodeTimeout=10"&loginNetworkTimeout=2&networkTimeout=500");

To set these parameters as a connection property:

Properties myProp = new Properties();
myProp.put("user", "dbadmin");
myProp.put("loginTimeout", "30"); // overall connection timeout is 30 seconds to make sure it is not too small for failover
myProp.put("loginNodeTimeout", "10"); // JDBC waits 10 seconds before attempting to connect to the next node if the Vertica process is running but does not respond
myProp.put("loginNetworkTimeout", "2"); // node connection timeout is 2 seconds
myProp.put("networkTimeout", "500"); // after the client has logged in, Vertica has 0.5 seconds to respond to each request
Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:vertica://VerticaHost:5433/verticadb", myProp);

Interaction with load balancing

When native connection load balancing is enabled, the additional servers specified in the BackupServerNode connection parameter are only used for the initial connection to a Vertica host. If host redirects the client to another host in the database cluster to handle its connection request, the second connection does not use the backup node list. This is rarely an issue, since native connection load balancing is aware of which nodes are currently up in the database.

See Load balancing in JDBC for more information.