Setting up an External Database

By default, TeamCity runs using an internal database based on the HSQLDB database engine. The internal database suits evaluation purposes since it works out of the box and requires no additional setup. However, we strongly recommend using an external database as a back-end TeamCity database in a production environment.
External database is usually more reliable and provides better performance.
TeamCity supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MS SQL and Sybase databases.

The database connection settings are configured in <TeamCity Data Directory>\config\database.properties file. If the file is not present, TeamCity automatically uses internal database.

This page covers external database setup for the first use with TeamCity. If you evaluated TeamCity with internal database and want to preserve the data while switching to an external database, please refer to Migrating to an External Database guide.

This page covers:

General Steps

1. If you already ran TeamCity but do not want to preserve any data, delete TeamCity Data Directory.

   If you delete TeamCity Data Directory, all the data you entered into TeamCity will be lost. To preserve your data, please refer to the migration guide.

2. Run TeamCity with the default settings to create the <TeamCity Data Directory>.
3. Shutdown the TeamCity server.
4. Perform database-specific steps described below.
5. Start the server.

   Please note that TeamCity actively modifies its own database schema. The user account used by TeamCity should have permissions to create new, modify and delete existing tables in its schema, in addition to usual read/write permissions on all tables.

Database Configuration Properties

TeamCity uses Apache DBCP for database connection pooling. Please refer to http://commons.apache.org/dbcp/configuration.html for detailed description of configuration properties. Example configurations for each of supported databases are provided in the sections below.

For all supported databases there are template files with database-specific properties, which you can use. These templates are located in the <TeamCity Data Directory>/config directory and have the following name format: database.<database_type>.properties.dist. In order to use a template, copy it to database.properties and then modify it to specify correct properties for your database connections.

Database Driver Installation

Due to licensing terms, TeamCity does not bundle driver jars for external databases. You will need to download the Java driver and put the appropriate jars (see below) from it into the specific place.
Since TeamCity 5.1, put the driver jar(s) into <TeamCity Data Directory>/lib/jdbc directory (create it if necessary).
In prior TeamCity versions, put the driver jar(s) into webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/lib directory of TeamCity installation (for .exe and .tar.gz distributions). Please note that you will need to repeat the step next time you upgrade TeamCity.

MySQL

Supported versions: (5.0.40+)
Recommended database server settings:

• use InnoDB storage engine
• use UTF-8 character set
• use case-sensitive collation

Installation:

1. Download the MySQL JDBC driver from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/.
2. Install MySQL connector driver jar (mysql-connector-java-*-bin.jar from the downloaded archive).
3. Create an empty database for TeamCity in MySQL and grant permissions to modify this database to a user from which TeamCity will work with this database.
4. In the <TeamCity data directory>/config folder rename database.mysql.properties file to database.properties and specify the required settings in this file:

PostgreSQL

Supported versions: 8.3+

1. Download the PostgreSQL JDBC driver from http://jdbc.postgresql.org/download.html and place it into the <TeamCity data directory>/lib/jdbc.
2. Create an empty database for TeamCity in PostgreSQL and grant permissions to modify this database to a user from which TeamCity will work with this database. Be sure to set up it to use UTF8.
3. In the <TeamCity data directory>/config folder create file database.properties and specify the required settings in this file:

Oracle

Supported versions: 10g, 11g

1. Create an Oracle user account for TeamCity (with CREATE SESSION, CREATE TABLE, EXECUTE ON SYS.DBMS_LOCK permissions).
2. Get the Oracle JDBC driver from your Oracle server installation, it should be two files:
   • ojdbc14.jar
   • orai18n.jar
     or download them from http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/java/sqlj_jdbc/htdocs/jdbc_10201.html and place them to <TeamCity data directory>/lib/jdbc. Please make sure to use the specified driver version 10.2.0.1.0 or higher, earlier driver versions may not function properly with TeamCity.
3. In the <TeamCity data directory>/config folder create file database.properties and specify the required settings in this file:

Microsoft SQL Server

Supported versions: 2005, 2008

1. Create new database, ensure that case insensitive collation is selected for this database.
2. Create TeamCity user and ensure the user is the owner of the database (grant the user dbo rights). This requirement is necessary because the user needs to have ability to modify database schema.
3. Download the latest jTDS driver driver ditributive file - it will be a zip file, unpack the jtds-*.jar driver jar and place it to <TeamCity data directory>/lib/jdbc.
4. In the <TeamCity data directory>/config folder create file database.properties and specify the required settings in this file:

To use Windows authentication, just exclude connectionProperties.user and connectionProperties.password properties.

The jtds driver doesn't know a "default" port value, so the port number in the connectionUrl is a mandatory parameter.

Please make sure SQL Server is configured to enable TCP connections on the port used in the connectionUrl.
If you use named instance (often the case with Express edition) you might need to specify instance property in the URL. e.g. connectionUrl=jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://<host>:1433/<database name>;instance=sqlexpress

Sybase

Supported version: ASE 15.0.3

TeamCity needs special configuration of the database to work appropriately.
Sybase should be configured to work with Case-insensitive table names.

1. Ensure that Sybase server is set up to use case-insensitive table names.
   This can be done in Sybase server config utility:
   1. Click on the "Configure Adaptive Server" button and select the server from the list
   2. Click on the "Language" button
   3. Click the button under the "Sort Order" label, and select the case-insensitive option (for example, "Dictionary order, case insensitive, accent insensitive").
2. Create a new empty database and apply the following options:
   Use the actual database name instead of DB_NAME.
3. Ensure the user that will be used by TeamCity to access the database has necessary permissions.
   Use the actual database name instead of DB_NAME, user name instead of TC_USER and password instead of TC_USER_PASSWORD.
4. Get the driver (file jconn3.jar that can be found in <Sybase home directory>/jConnect-6_0/classes) and place it to <TeamCity data directory>/lib/jdbc.
5. In the <TeamCity data directory>/config folder create or modify the database.properties file and specify the following settings in this file, replacing DB_NAME, TC_USER and TC_USER_PASSWORD with the values used during database configuration:

See Also:

• Installation and Upgrade: Migrating to an External Database