When you deploy an application that depends on the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver, you must redistribute the JDBC driver together with your application. Unlike Windows Data Access Components (Windows DAC), which is a component of the Windows operating system, the JDBC driver is considered to be a component of SQL Server.

Note: Although you can freely distribute the JDBC driver as your application requires, you must first register to do this. To register to redistribute the JDBC driver, see Register for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver Redistribution Rights.

There are two approaches to deploying the JDBC driver with your application. One is to include the JDBC driver files as part of your own custom installation package. The second approach involves using the JDBC installation package provided by Microsoft, which you can download from the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver Developer Center.

The following sections discuss how to use the JDBC installation package on Windows and UNIX operating systems.

Note: For information about deploying Java applications in general, see the Java Deployment Overview on the Sun Microsystems Web site.

Deploying the JDBC Driver on Windows Systems

When you deploy the JDBC driver on Windows operating systems, you must use the executable zip file version of the installation package, which is typically named sqljdbc_<version>_enu.exe.

To run the executable zip file silently, you must use the /auto command-line option on the command line or in a batch file as in the following:

sqljdbc_<version>_enu.exe /auto

Note: When you use the /auto option it is not a truly silent installation, as a WinZip dialog box still appears on the user's screen. However, you will not need to interact with it and it closes as soon as the unzip operation is complete.

Deploying the Driver on UNIX Systems

When you deploy the JDBC driver on UNIX operating systems, you must use the gzip file version of the installation package, which is typically named sqljdbc_<version>_enu.tar.gz.

Before you install the JDBC driver, make sure that both the gzip and tar utilities are installed on the user's system, and that the folders that contain the executables for both utilities are added to the PATH environment variable.

To run the gzip file silently, use the xfz command-line options on the command line or in a batch file, as in the following:

tar xfz sqljdbc_<version>_enu.tar.gz

Note: When you use the xfz options, it is not a truly silent installation, because some warnings might be sent to the standard output.

See Also