In my job, I usually work with other rdbms like postgres, sql server, teradata etc. But I usually use SQL Developer as an IDE.

In this post I will explain how to configure SQL Developer if you want to connect and use it with other rdbms than Oracle:

Step 1 … Download and Install SQL Developer

SQL Developer is available for download at this URL: https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/sql-developer/downloads/index.html

Download the version you want and install it (I don’t explain how to proceed here … I’m sure you’re smart enough to do that alone ! 😉 )

Once downloaded, installed, then executed, you can add new connection but only to Oracle databases:

Step 2 … Download libraries

To be configured for other rdbms, SQL Developer need extra libraries, and more precisely extra jdbc libraries for the required rdbms.

Depending on the target rdbms, you will have to download these libraries :

Postgres

Download the jdbc driver enclosed in a jar file for postgres. Jar files are available at this URL : https://jdbc.postgresql.org/download.html

I recommend to download the 42.2.5 JDBC 42 driver, but download the driver you need depending on your PG Server version, your JDBC driver version etc.

MySQL / MariaDB

Configuring SQL Developer to be able to connect to mysql or mariadb server need mysql Connector / J available at this URL: https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/

Download the “Platform Independant” connector, and extract the jar file included in the archive/zip file. When writing this blog post the last version was mysql-connector-java-8.0.16, and the required jar file was mysql-connector-java-8.0.16.jar.

SQL Server / Sybase

Download the jTDS jar file at this URL: https://sourceforge.net/projects/jtds/files/, and extract the jar file included in the zip file. (jTDS is described here: http://jtds.sourceforge.net/).

Note: the jTDS is a bit older, and I didn’t use it to connect to recent version of MSSQL (including in the Azure Cloud). It will required some tests.

TeraData

To be able to connect a teradata database with SQL Developer, you need to download the jdbc driver for teradata. These drivers are available at this URL: https://downloads.teradata.com/download/connectivity/jdbc-driver. (It’s free but you will need an account to download it.).

Once downloaded, you will need both jars included in the zipfile. (terajdbc4.jar and tdgssconfig.jar).

Step 3 … Configure SQL Developer to use these third-party JDBC Drivers

First of all, you will have to put all the needed jars in a folder (somewhere in the sqldeveloper subfolders). In my case, I put them in the $SQLDEV_HOME/jdbc/lib directory.

Then, you’ll have to add the needed third party librairies in SQL Developer.

To do that, Menu “Tools”/”Preferences”, and select “Database” and then click on the “Third Party JDBC Drivers”.

Now, you have just to add new entries by selecting the needed jar files :

Step 4 … Create new connections from these third-party drivers

Now, when we create a new connection, the “Database Type” Menu contains more entries:

Once selected, the GUI changes a bit with the required fields to connect to the database type you chose.

That’s it for today 😉