Derby

From APIDesign

Derby (also known as Java DB) is a lightweight, embeddable SQL database. It is very useful while running tests. I decided to use it to demonstrate functionality of the LiveDB project.

It took me about two days to find out how to configure the Derby database through Ant build script. I wanted the Ant script to start the database, create there a table, fill it with some sample data and then compile and execute associated unit tests. For a while I was oscillating between using embedded driver vs. starting the server and connecting to it via socket. At the end the embedded driver turned to be easier to use:

does not exists: livedb.derby.create

The last problem that I had to face was inconsistent state of a database. To eliminate that, you need to close the shut the database down. As far as I can tell this cannot be done in Ant (version 1.8.1) without having an <sql> target that fails and print a nasty warning. However even this is easier than writing own Ant task (as suggested elsewhere on the blogosphere).

I could not google out any sufficient how to, thus I am writing this one. I hope it will be useful for those who want to merge Ant and Derby database.

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