At the moment I pull data from remote MS SQL Server databases using custom-built JDBC connectors. This works fine but doesn't feel like the way to do it.
I feel I should be able to put a JDBC connection string into tnsnames on the server and have it "just work". I've looked around a little for this functionality but it doesn't seem to be there.
In this way I could connect to pretty much any database just using a database link.
Have I missed something?
It looks like the two options are Generic Connectivity and Oracle Gateways but I'm surprised that's all there is. Generic Connectivity comes with the database license and Oracle Gateways is an add-on. For Generic Connectivity, if you're running on Linux (like me) you need to get hold of an ODBC driver as it isn't bundled with the database.
However... with Oracle being such keen Java fans, and with a JVM built-in to the database I'd have thought a JDBC-based linking technology would have been a no-brainer. It seems a natural extension to have a JDBC connection string in TNSNAMES and everything would "just work".
Anyone any ideas why this isn't available?