I am developing a java applet which connects to mysql database, the applet works fine on local host but when I uploaded it and tried to run, i get an error as "communications link failure the last packet sent successfully to the server was 0 milliseconds ago.
the driver has not recieved any packets from the server"
i tried it on x10hosting and hostable, please help me if anyone knows the solution...
Are you sure your MySQL server port is really open to the public? E.g., on a publicly-routable IP address and not blocked by your routers/network? Most likely your MySQL instance is not accessible from the outside world...
...which is how it should be. It's very, very, very rarely appropriate to have an applet talk directly to your database server. The usual thing is for the applet to talk to a middle tier on your web server, which in turn talks to the database server. There's a security aspect to that (your middle-tier can defend against various attacks on your database), and there's a practicality aspect: You'll probably want to keep the chatter across the public network to a minimum, and your server can roll up the results of multiple operations into one bundle it then sends to the client.
If your MySQL server really is available to the outside world, is its host the same as the host the applet is loaded from? That's one of the security requirements for (unsigned) applets, that they can only open network connections to the same host they were loaded from. But if that were the issue, I would have expected you to get a security exception (unless Connector/J is hiding it from you).
The applet is client-side. If you want to directly connect to a mysql server this would mean each user that opens the applet should either have mysql installed or have access and credentials to the remote database. Even if your firewall allows the access it is a very bad idea to do so. If you do everyone will have access to your database.
So if you want to communicate with a remote database, use some protocol (http would be easiest, via a Servlet) to send requests to the server and receive responses generated based on the database results. For example invoking http://yoursite.com/addRecord?name=foo&email=bar#baz.com could tell the server-side application to open a (local) connection to mysql and insert a record.
Related
sorry if this is a super easy question, but I have been googling a lot and I have failed to get a result.
I am looking for a way that I can either purchase or host so that I and others can connect remotely.
I have all my code working locally, but I would just like to know how to host for others to join.
There are many ways to provide a MySQL server instance that's accessible over the public internet.
For this to be secure, you'll need to use transport layer security (TLS) for the connections from JDBC clients to the server. Even when you do this you'll need to be vigilant about the security of your database.
If your users' data is sensitive, or needs protection against cybercriminals, this is probably a bad idea. (Sensitive data: personally identifiable information, payment/credit card data, health data, personal financial data). It's much safer to put MySQL instances behind solid firewalls, and use web services and/or web sites to grant access to the public internet.
You could run a virtual machine instance on AWS or some other cloud service provider, and put MySQL on it. AWS also offers a Relational Database managed service you could use.
You could use a GoDaddy style service, and enable remote access to your own MySQL instance on that service.
You could put a MySQL instance on a machine in the DMZ -- the publicly visible segment -- of your home or office network. Most home and small-office routers allow a particular port on a particular machine to be made visible to the public network.
Be careful, k?
I am working on java desktop application (swing) which needs to be install/run in three different computers on same Local Network ( LAN ). But this application need to share one database and each application should be able to insert, update, delete records in the same database.
How do i achieved that in java, any suggestion/help would be appreciated ?
Thanks in advance
I came across this while reading some questions. I also created a desktop application which is being accessed by other computers on the same network which includes laptops and desktop PCs in the past.
Step 1:
Choose which of the PCs will be the server. In other words, which among the PCs will be your server. Your chosen PC-server will have a server application(e.g. XAMPP) installed. This PC is where you will import your existing database (.sql file). Other PCs don't have to have XAMPP(or other server applications) installed on them. Other PCs only need to have a copy of the desktop application that you created. No need to set other PCs with server application and sql.
This PC-server that you have chosen will have a connection string with localhost since I assume that all of them are not accessing the internet to use the database.
Example: jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/yourdatabasename
Step 2:
Grant privileges to the database that was setup on your chosen PC-server
The simplest example is the one below.
grant all privileges on db_name.* to 'username'#'localhost' identified by 'password';
Don't forget to replace with your connections' username and password
But you may also select certain privileges based on your preference.
Step 3:
Set other PCs' connection string that has copy of the desktop application you created.
If PC-server has an IP Address of let's say 192.168.2.3 then, the connection string of other PCs will be
jdbc:mysql://192.168.2.3:3306/yourdatabasename
Other PCs will connect using the PC-Server's IP address since our database and server application was setup on PC-Server.
I hope this helps and others who might see this question.
Peace.
This is a basic approach to this problem:
-Have a client side application and server side
Request access to the database, have the server side application either accept or reject the request.
Once authenticated to the database, have the server side application send the information over to the client application containing the database info
When the client application wants to perform one of the actions you described : update,delete,etc...have it send requests to the server application to complete these.
It works exactly as if the database is local.
THe only main difference is that the url to the database is not in the form 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) but has the ip of the machine where the database is present.
If changing that you have connection problems probably a firewall is blocking your requests. Check if a firewall exists and open the port of the database.
If more applications try to access to data at the same time you need to put autocommit to false and manually commit the data only when the update is finished. Other threads reading or trying to update the same data will wait until the first thread has committed (or rollbacked) the transaction.
I'm developing a Java Swing based app which uses JDBC to connect to a MySQL database. As such, the software directly remotely access the database from whichever computer it happens to be running on. Additionally, the app uses prepared statements to query the database and the database is hosted on a shared CPanel hosting account (if that matters).
The snippet of code I use to connect to the database is as follows (fairly standard connect code I think and all strings in all caps contain the correct contents):
String url = "jdbc:mysql://URL:PORT/DB_NAME?connectTimeout=3000";
Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(url, USERNAME, PASSWORD);
I have only ever successfully used the app from one IP. Before I use the app from an IP, I have to manually whitelist the IP by adding it as an allowed remote MySQL access host. If I don't add the IP as an allowed access host, the server refuses my connection and I get the resultant error:
com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.CommunicationsException: Communications link failure
The last packet sent successfully to the server was 0 milliseconds ago. The driver has not received any packets from the server.
Then if I whitelist an IP and try to connect from it, I don't get that error and the app connects to the database properly.
This system would be okay if the app were only going to be used from one IP, but it needs to work from any IP since I cannot predict who will download and use it. The only solution I see would be to do a global whitelist of all IPs in the allowed MySQL access hosts area. However, that seems like it has many drawbacks, such as being insecure as anyone who has the correct password could log in (and would thus be susceptible to brute force attacks). This seems to corroborate the hypothesis that that method is insecure. Thus, I would like to have a system of communicating between the app and database that is IP-independent (doesn't require whitelisting all the IPs).
Additionally (I don't know if this makes sense or matters), but I believe some of the areas I expect the app to be used in block certain protocols. Thus, (I think) I would like it if the selected method of communication only used HTTP or some other widely-used protocol.
I did some research into this problem and my efforts led me to 2-tier and n-tier models of database communication. Perhaps I could do something like make a PHP page which accepts a statement and a series of parameters (plus a password to gain entry), executes the statement, and then returns the result back as JSON. However, this seems like another less-than-ideal method as it seems like it would also have security problems.
I'm sure someone more experienced and knowledgeable than I has already come across this problem and developed a solution.
Therefore, my question: What is the preferred method of connecting to a MySQL database from a Java app in an IP-independent way?
I greatly appreciate and thank you for your time.
You're on the right track:
1) If you want any arbitrary client to connect directly to your database, and the clients can have any arbitrary IP address ... then you're probably going to have to effectly disable IP security be whitelisting all possible client IP addresses.
2) On the other hand, if you only allow local access to mySql (by far the most common scenario), then you can create a web app to interface between your clients and mySql.
SUGGESTION:
Consider creating a "REST" web service that your clients can talk to.
Here's a good tutorial that might help you get started:
REST with Java (JAX-RS) using Jersey - Tutorial
Q: Does your Swing app really need to emit "raw SQL"? Or can it make "high level" queries? REST is ideally suited for the latter.
PS:
Here's another, short example that might help suggest some design alternatives with REST, mySQL and Java for you:
http://www.9lessons.info/2012/09/restful-web-services-api-using-java-and.html
You are up against the policies -- primarily the security policies -- of your hosting provider. It's generally considered insecure to allow port 3306 (MySQL) connections from the whole internet. It certainly lays your MySQL server open to trivial denial-of-service attacks. (It just takes some knucklehead controlling a botnet to send in lots of port 3306 connection attempts. They don't even have to be successful connection attempts.) If you're sharing your MySQL server with other customers of your hosting provider, they have every incentive to restrict your remote access to their server.
Most folks who build database applications for deployment on the public internet do it by providing web services to hit the database with the specific operations required by the application. The application deployed at the end-user's machine then uses HTTP (or HTTPS for security) to access those web services. In turn the web services access the database. That's what multitier operations do. You're right that there are security problems, but you can mitigate them with careful development of your web service code.
You could use SSH tunneling to handle your database access. The SSH suite of remote-access applications allows port forwarding. To use this, you would establish (authenticated and encrypted) ssh connections between your end-users' machines and your database machine, that forward port 3306. Then your users could connect to localhost:3306, and that net traffic would be forwarded to your database server. It's pretty flexible and quite secure, if not completely simple to configure.
You might also investigate using SQL Relay. It's generally used for connection pooling and management within a data center network, but it might work for this purpose.
Be careful opening up your MySQL server to the world! If you do that you may want to require the use of TLS encrypted conections.
Currently I have a Java application which performs all I wanted and the limitation
in it is "It only resides on the Local machine for which it needs to work". I have the Access Databases located on a Remote Server and I install the Java app on the remote server to connect the databases using a connection string jdbc:odbc:DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)}; DBQ=D:\\DATA\\DPPI\\DATA\\DPPI\\DPPIPR01.mdb;
It connects to Access Databases and do all the business logic with them.
Enhancements (to be done):
Making the application online - not a big issue.
Connecting the databases remotely - its the only concern.
If I make the Application Online the Access Databases need to be connecting through network (somewhat like IP or some web address).
Problem:
But after going through this Connect to Access database remotely It seems my requirement can not be completed.
Is there any way if I'm able to upload the database to the online web hosting server and access the database from there only? If yes, then how should I do the connectivity since Access Database connects by giving the fully qualified name containing drive letter and all.
But how should I proceed further so that I may be able to connect the mdb Databases remotely?
ADO Solution:
But after going through the link: http://webcheatsheet.com/ASP/access_connection_strings.php, it seems we can perform remote Access Database connectivity.
The solution for the ADO is something like:
connectionString="Provider=MS Remote; Remote Server=http://your_remote_server_ip;" &_
"Remote Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0; Data Source=c:\your_database_name.mdb"
I'm a tad confused to how Access Database we can connect.
There is one more question in my head.
I'm making use of Type-1 Driver. Should the Type-4 Driver support the remote connectivity?
If your application is a server side application (like a web application) and your server's OS is Windows then theoretically it is possible to use your Access database. In this scenario, the Access database is local to your application. In your connection string you can simply use the path to the Access database inside your server's file system.
But keep in mind, that Access is a desktop database not made to use it as a server database. This can lead to poor performance and maybe system crashes. And it is possible that there are some licencing issues for this use case.
So even it may be possible to use Access with a server application it is strongly recommended to use a real server database like MySQL, MS SQL Server, etc. Even an embedded database like Apache Derby or H2 would be a better fit.
If your application runs at client side like a fat client, then your only chance to use Access is to put it on a network filesystem, so it is visible from every client. But this works only inside a LAN. If you cannot put it on a network filesystem then you have to use a real server database.
Do not use Provider=MS Remote (RDS) for new development. Here is a quote from the MSDN article
Microsoft OLE DB Remoting Provider (ADO Service Provider)
Important
Beginning with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, RDS server components are no longer included in the Windows operating system (see Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 Compatibility Cookbook for more detail). RDS client components will be removed in a future version of Windows. Avoid using this feature in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use this feature. Applications that use RDS should migrate to WCF Data Service.
As others have suggested, you should seriously consider using a different back-end database for this particular application.
What if I'm able to call another java application residing on the Server housing the Microsoft Access Databases? Can you please let me know if it can be the solution such that I will have the division of my application into two:
1. The Online java Application performing 2 things: Accepting the requests coming in and waiting for the response to come from another application running on the Server housing the Microsoft Access Databases.
2. The Java application installed on the Server housing the Microsoft Access Databases only responsible for connecting and returning the DTO (Data Transfer Objects) -or some kind of objects in Collections.
So, I would expect a serverside program to handle the communication with the DB and the client application would communicate with the server app.
Please let me know if I should proceed in this manner.
it can be done by marking the traffic and queueing the traffic from the server---to----remote site ---(QOS..quality of service ) .....the two sites will be connected through VPN methods to reduce the unnecessary hops that will improve the latency plus add the security , thus server and remote site will logically act as if they are on the same network (LAN)
regards ,
Ali Rehan
I am trying to connect to a database on my website from a java applet.
When I try from eclipse, it says that there was a communications link failure and that the driver has not received any packets from the server. Is that because only applets on the actual server can connect to a database?
So I exported it as a jar and I personally signed it and uploaded it to my website. Then using as embed tag, I put it in my webpage.
<div id="blah">
<embed id="Math"
type="application/x-java-applet"
width="810" height="600"
archive="mathG.jar,mysql-connector-java-5.1.23-bin.jar"
code="com.mathg.math.MathG"
codebase="test"
pluginspage="http://java.com/download/"/>
Is that the proper way to put the applet on the site? The applet shows up and it works on the webpage, but when I press a button to connect to the database, it says that it couldn't connect.
I tried using both localhost and the actual ip in my java code to try to connect, but neither works.
Putting the IP address of the database server is preferred; localhost should only be used for quick & dirty local tests. It's unlikely that you'll deploy an app or database on localhost.
This is a very bad idea. No applet should have direct access to a database from the internet. All that data is exposed.
A better idea is to put a servlet in-between the applet and database. Deploy the servlet by exposing it to the internet; put the database behind a firewall and only open its port to the servlet. Let the servlet handle authentication, validation, binding, and interacting with the database. Users will be much better off with this design.