Choose File Type
Choose "GlassFish in the "Categories:" pane, then "JDBC Resource" in the "File Types:" pane. Then click on the "Next" button.
A JDBC resource is a database resource that can be registered with an application server for access by a web application program. It is an object that implements the javax.sql.DataSource interface. Its getConnection() method returns a java.sql.Connection object. This object has methods for sending SQL queries to the database behind the resource.
NetBeans has support for creating a JDBC resource for any database that appears under the "Database" node in the "Services" pane. It does not matter if the database is currently connected.
Creating a JDBC resource begins with bring up a "New File" wizard for the project needing the resource. This can be done by either right clicking on the project and selecting "New"→"Other" from the popup window or selecting the project and choosing "New File…" from the NetBeans "File" menu. The "New File" wizard has 6 steps:
Choose "GlassFish in the "Categories:" pane, then "JDBC Resource" in the "File Types:" pane. Then click on the "Next" button.
You will be creating a new connection pool so click on the "Create New JDBC Connection Pool" radio button. You will need to give the resource a name. It should begin with "jdbc/". Accept default values for the other fields. Then you can click on the "Next" button.
For the Core JSF database application, we already have source code that references the resource. This forces us to use the resource name "jdbc/mydb" (the descenders in the "j" and "y" are not clear in the screen shot).
For your information, application servers such as GlassFish set up pools of connections to support multiple clients connecting to the server. Each client gets its connections from the pool and returns them when it is done by closing the connection. Creating new connections takes significantly longer than fetching one from a pool, so this is a performance optimization.
There is nothing that you need to do here. Just click on the "Next" button.
If the "Extract from Existing Connection" button is not selected then you should select it. Select the database you want from the combobox and click on the "Next" button.
In the case, we have just selected "theDatabase" which we created in the first part of this web page.
The default values should be accepted here. You can click on the "Next" button to see what that step looks like. You usually do not need to do anything on the last step so you can just click on the "Finish" button.
For development, there is nothing that you should change here. If you have a heavily loaded live web application you can make adjustments to the pool settings to better handle the load. But you should know quite a bit about connection pools before you make such changes.
You can see some of what NetBeans has done for you by looking at the new glassfish-resources.xml file. In the "Projects" pane expand the "Server Resources" node and open the file.
Here it is in the NetBeans editor pane.