Connect to an Azure SQL database

Download JDBC driver

This article discusses issues when you use the Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server to connect to an Azure SQL Database. For more information to connect to an Azure SQL Database, see:

• Azure SQL Database

• How to: Connect to Azure SQL Using JDBC

• Connect using authentication with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory)

Details

To connect to an Azure SQL Database, you should connect to the master database to call SQLServerDatabaseMetaData.getCatalogs.
Azure SQL Database doesn't support returning the entire set of catalogs from a user database. SQLServerDatabaseMetaData.getCatalogs use the sys.databases view to get the catalogs. Refer to the discussion of permissions in sys.databases (Transact-SQL) to understand SQLServerDatabaseMetaData.getCatalogs behavior on an Azure SQL Database.

Login timeout

When connecting to Azure SQL databases, the recommended default loginTimeout is 30 seconds. If you're connecting to a serverless instance, it's recommended to use an even longer loginTimeout of 60 seconds or more. If the serverless instance has been idle, it can take some time to wake up on an initial connection. For more information on how to set the loginTimeout, see Setting the connection properties.

Connections dropped

When you connect to an Azure SQL Database, idle connections may be terminated by a network component (such as a firewall) after a period of inactivity. There are two types of idle connections, in this context:

• Idle at the TCP layer, where connections can be dropped by any number of network devices.

• Idle by the Azure SQL Gateway, where TCP keepalive messages might be occurring (which makes the connection not idle from a TCP perspective), but not had an active query in 30 minutes. In this scenario, the Gateway will determine that the TDS connection is idle at 30 minutes and terminates the connection.

To address the second point and avoid the Gateway terminating idle connections, you can:

• Use the Redirect connection policy to configure your Azure SQL data source.

• Keep connections active via lightweight activity. This method isn't recommended and should only be used if there are no other possible options.

To address the first point and avoid dropping idle connections by a network component, set the following registry settings or their non-Windows equivalents on the operating system where the driver is loaded:

Restart the computer for the registry settings to take effect.

The KeepAliveTime and KeepAliveInterval values are in milliseconds. These settings cause an unresponsive connection to disconnect within 10 to 40 seconds. If no response is received after a keep alive packet is sent, it will be retried every second up to 10 times. If no response is received during that time, the client-side socket is disconnected. Depending on your environment, you might want to increase the KeepAliveInterval to accommodate known disruptions (for example, virtual machine migrations), that might cause a server to be unresponsive for longer than 10 seconds.

To configure this in an Azure VM, create a startup task to add the registry keys. For example, add the following Startup task to the service definition file:

<Startup>  
    <Task commandLine="AddKeepAlive.cmd" executionContext="elevated" taskType="simple">  
    </Task>  
</Startup>  

Then add an AddKeepAlive.cmd file to your project. Set the "Copy to Output Directory" setting to Copy always. The following script is a sample AddKeepAlive.cmd file:

if exist keepalive.txt goto done  
time /t > keepalive.txt  
REM Workaround for JDBC keep alive on Azure SQL  
REG ADD HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters /v KeepAliveTime /t REG_DWORD /d 30000 >> keepalive.txt  
REG ADD HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters /v KeepAliveInterval /t REG_DWORD /d 1000 >> keepalive.txt  
REG ADD HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters /v TcpMaxDataRetransmissions /t REG_DWORD /d 10 >> keepalive.txt  
shutdown /r /t 1  
:done  

Append the server name to the userId in the connection string

Prior to the 4.0 version of the Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server, to connect to an Azure SQL Database, you were required to append the server name to the UserId in the connection string. For example, user@servername. Beginning in version 4.0 of the Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server, it's no longer necessary to append @servername to the UserId in the connection string.

Using encryption requires setting hostNameInCertificate

Prior to the 7.2 version of the Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server, to connect to an Azure SQL Database, you should specify hostNameInCertificate if you specify encrypt=true (If the server name in the connection string is shortName.domainName, set the hostNameInCertificate property to *.domainName.). This property is optional as of version 7.2 of the driver.

For example:

jdbc:sqlserver://abcd.int.mscds.com;databaseName=myDatabase;user=myName;password=myPassword;encrypt=true;hostNameInCertificate=*.int.mscds.com;

See also

Connecting to SQL Server with the JDBC driver