下述内容基于关于Tomcat-5.x的指示说明，http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-5.0-doc/jndi-datasource-examples-howto.html，在编写本文档时它是最新的。
首先安装与Connector/J in $CATALINA_HOME/common/lib一起提供的.jar文件，以便它能用于已安装的所有应用程序。
其次，在定义Web应用程序的Context（场景）内，通过为$CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml增加声明资源，配置JNDI DataSource：
<Context ....>
...
<Resource name="jdbc/MySQLDB"
auth="Container"
type="javax.sql.DataSource"/>
<!-- The name you used above, must match _exactly_ here!
The connection pool will be bound into JNDI with the name
"java:/comp/env/jdbc/MySQLDB"
-->
<ResourceParams name="jdbc/MySQLDB">
<parameter>
<name>factory</name>
<value>org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory</value>
</parameter>
<!-- Don't set this any higher than max_connections on your
MySQL server, usually this should be a 10 or a few 10's
of connections, not hundreds or thousands -->
<parameter>
<name>maxActive</name>
<value>10</value>
</parameter>
<!-- You don't want to many idle connections hanging around
if you can avoid it, only enough to soak up a spike in
the load -->
<parameter>
<name>maxIdle</name>
<value>5</value>
</parameter>
<!-- Don't use autoReconnect=true, it's going away eventually
and it's a crutch for older connection pools that couldn't
test connections. You need to decide if your application is
supposed to deal with SQLExceptions (hint, it should), and
how much of a performance penalty you're willing to pay
to ensure 'freshness' of the connection -->
<parameter>
<name>validationQuery</name>
<value>SELECT 1</value>
</parameter>
<!-- The most conservative approach is to test connections
before they're given to your application. For most applications
this is okay, the query used above is very small and takes
no real server resources to process, other than the time used
to traverse the network.
If you have a high-load application you'll need to rely on
something else. -->
<parameter>
<name>testOnBorrow</name>
<value>true</value>
</parameter>
<!-- Otherwise, or in addition to testOnBorrow, you can test
while connections are sitting idle -->
<parameter>
<name>testWhileIdle</name>
<value>true</value>
</parameter>
<!-- You have to set this value, otherwise even though
you've asked connections to be tested while idle,
the idle evicter thread will never run -->
<parameter>
<name>timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis</name>
<value>10000</value>
</parameter>
<!-- Don't allow connections to hang out idle too long,
never longer than what wait_timeout is set to on the
server...A few minutes or even fraction of a minute
is sometimes okay here, it depends on your application
and how much spikey load it will see -->
<parameter>
<name>minEvictableIdleTimeMillis</name>
<value>60000</value>
</parameter>
<!-- Username and password used when connecting to MySQL -->
<parameter>
<name>username</name>
<value>someuser</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>password</name>
<value>somepass</value>
</parameter>
<!-- Class name for the Connector/J driver -->
<parameter>
<name>driverClassName</name>
<value>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</value>
</parameter>
<!-- The JDBC connection url for connecting to MySQL, notice
that if you want to pass any other MySQL-specific parameters
you should pass them here in the URL, setting them using the
parameter tags above will have no effect, you will also
need to use & to separate parameter values as the
ampersand is a reserved character in XML -->
<parameter>
<name>url</name>
<value>jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/test</value>
</parameter>
</ResourceParams>
</Context>
一般而言，应遵循关于相应Tomcat版本的安装说明，这是因为，在Tomcat中配置数据源的方式会随时变化，很不幸，如果在XML文件中使用了错误的语法，很可能会以异常结束，如下所示：
Error: java.sql.SQLException: Cannot load JDBC driver class 'null ' SQL state: null