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  4. Connection providers

Connection providers

Overview

The connection providers page allows you to view, edit, test and synchronize your connections.

The main screen is a summary. See the following screenshot.

 

At the top is a table of the existing connection providers containing three columns:

  • Database name
  • Description
  • Status: "connected" for working connections, "error" otherwise.

At the bottom is a table of the available database platforms containing three columns:

  • Description: the common name of the database platform/product
  • Standard driver class name
  • Status: "ok" if the driver was found in the classpath, "driver not found" otherwise.

When you create a new connection provider, only the database platforms that are "ok" are available. 

Creating a new connection provider

To create a new connection provider click on the "Create new" button. This takes you to the wizard.

Connection provider details

From the list of the existing connections, click on a row to view its details. Looking at the page from top to bottom you can notice:

  • The action buttons bar. 
  • The connection details
  • The list of schemas used by the system
  • A number of automatically detected values, such as the name and versions of the database and of the JDBC driver.

From the action button bar you can perform a number of operations:

  • Return to list: return to the connection providers main page.
  • Edit: edit the connection details and select the schemas.
  • Test: test the connection now. This is useful if you had a transient error on the database and you want re-test the connection.
  • Syncronize: align the internal representation of the model (portofino-model.xml) with the real database.

 

Editing a connection provider

This function allows to edit the connection details and to select the schema you intend to use in your application among those available on the database.

Synchronizing a connection provider

Portofino uses an internal representation of the database(s). The representation contains all the important metadata, like schemas, tables, columns, primary keys and foreign keys. The representation is stored in portofino-model.xml in your application's directory.

If you change the underlying database(s), the Synchronize button will re-read all the metadata from the database(s) and update the internal representation accordingly.