System and method for improving application connectivity in a clustered database environment

A method for supporting affinity in a clustered database environment, comprising:

• providing a clustered database, which includes a plurality of database instances;
• providing a notification service associated with the clustered database, which broadcasts notifications that describe state changes within the database instances;
• providing an application server associated with a data source and a connection pool,
• wherein the data source includes a connection pool that manages a set of connections to the plurality of database instances, and is associated with an affinity policy that defines which, if any, type of affinity will be used by that data source and its connections at runtime, to access the clustered database, and
• wherein the data source uses the notifications of state changes received from the notification service to adaptively configure connections to the database instances, for use by applications at the application server;
• and
• upon receiving a connection reserve request from an application to access a selected database instance, the data source
• determining the affinity policy associated with the data source,
• determining whether there is already an affinity context associated with the application context for the request, and if not then selects a connection for use with the selected database instance,
• storing the instance information with the application context for use on the next connection reserve request.

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium, including instructions stored thereon which when read and executed by one or more computers cause the one or more computers to perform the steps comprising:

• providing a clustered database, which includes a plurality of database instances;
• providing a notification service associated with the clustered database, which broadcasts notifications that describe state changes within the database instances;
• providing an application server associated with a data source and a connection pool,
• wherein the data source includes a connection pool that manages a set of connections to the plurality of database instances, and is associated with an affinity policy that defines which, if any, type of affinity will be used by that data source and its connections at runtime, to access the clustered database, and
• wherein the data source uses the notifications of state changes received from the notification service to adaptively configure connections to the database instances, for use by applications at the application server;
• and
• upon receiving a connection reserve request from an application to access a selected database instance, the data source
• determining the affinity policy associated with the data source,
• determining whether there is already an affinity context associated with the application context for the request, and if not then selects a connection for use with the selected database instance,
• storing the instance information with the application context for use on the next connection reserve request.