Help me understand JDBC connections using DataSource objects

Question

I'm writing a simple Java server application that accepts connections from multiple clients via RMI, connects to a SQL Server 2000 database via Microsoft's SQL 2000 JDBC driver, gets some data, and returns it to the client. The server application will handle every SQL database connection. However, it must be able to establish multiple simultaneous connections, since multiple clients may connect at the same time and request data.
Sounds like a simple multi-threaded server that utilizes a connection pool for database connectivity, right? Well, if I want to do that, I have to register a PooledDataSource object with JNDI. My server threads that are handling requests will simply grab connections out of the pool to retrieve data (presumably).
This seems like a fairly simple server application; however, all the information and tutorials I've read on using DataSource objects for database connections rather than DriverManager.getConnection() mention XML config files, J2EE application servers, Tomcat, WebSphere, etc. I really don't want to have to deal with all that just to get connection pooling and not have to use the DriverManager.getConnection() method.
Is there a simple way to use DataSource objects without installing a lot of extra junk on my server?

Answer 1

Thanks, diazlara. Your response was exactly what I needed to know. All the information I've read prior to this suggested that I had to have a J2EE server running, and that I had to register the DataSource object with JNDI. If you ladies and gents could take a quick look at this and let me know if I'm doing it correctly, I'd appreciate it.
As proflux suggested, I wrote a connection manager:
import java.sql.*;
import javax.sql.*;
import com.microsoft.jdbcx.sqlserver.*;
public class SQLConnectionManager {
   private static ConnectionPoolDataSource connectionPool;
   // Initialize the connection manager
   public SQLConnectionManager() {
      init();
   // Retrieve a connection from the connection pool and return it
   public static Connection getConnection() {
      Connection connection = null;
      try {
         connection = connectionPool.getPooledConnection("myUsername", "myPassword").getConnection();
      catch (SQLException ex) {
         System.err.println("A problem occurred while getting a connection from the pool.");
         ex.printStackTrace();
      return connection;
   // Initialize the datasource and connection pool
   private static void init() {
      SQLServerDataSource mds = new SQLServerDataSource();
      mds.setDescription("MS SQLServerDataSource");
      mds.setServerName("127.0.0.1");
      mds.setPortNumber(1433);
      mds.setDatabaseName("SomeTable");
      mds.setSelectMethod("cursor");
      connectionPool = (ConnectionPoolDataSource) mds;
}As you can see, I'm hard-coding the username and password for testing purposes. I'll incorporate a login/authentication system for any production code that I use this in.
Once the SQLConnectionManager is created, connections can be retrieved as follows:
      Connection connection = null;
      try {
         connection = SQLConnectionManager.getConnection();
         System.out.println("** Got a SQL database connection from the pool");
         DatabaseMetaData metaData = connection.getMetaData();
         ResultSet rs = metaData.getCatalogs();
         while (rs.next()) {
            System.out.println("\tcatalog: " + rs.getString(1));
         rs.close();
         connection.close();
      catch (SQLException ex) {
         System.out.println("An exception occurred while connecting to the SQL Database:");
         ex.printStackTrace();
      }So, how does that look? I tested it out, and it seems to work just fine. Using this code, I am getting a connection from a pool, correct? I want to make sure of that. Also, are there any inherent weaknesses or flaws with this method that I need to be aware of?
Thanks so much for all the helpful responses.