Connecting to MySQL from BI Publisher

Since BI Publisher just uses a JDBC connection you can of course configure it connect to a MySQL database! I'm using v5.1 of the MySQL Connector/J and BI Publisher is running on Apache 5.5. Here's the instructions:

1. Download the latest MySQL JDBC driver, which can be found here
2. Copy the mysql-connector-java-5.1.7-bin.jar JAR file to $CATALINA_HOME/shared/lib directory
3. Restart you application server (Tomcat in this case)
4. Connect to BI Publisher and click on the Admin tab and then click on the JDBC Connection hyperlink
5. Select the Add Data Source button
6. The connection String should be as follows:

jdbc:mysql://<server>:<port>/<database name>

7. The database driver class should be:

com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

8. Enter the other required information such as username, password and then click on Test Connection.