Load database look up tables during servlet start up

First, putting database access classes/methods in the Struts classes is not a good idea.  It makes your action class hard to test and you will repeat the same DB code in other pages that use the database.  One solution is to create a TransactionGateway:

class TransactionGateway
{
        Connection dbConn;
        public TransactionGateway(String dataSource)
        {
            //Load the connection by looking up the connection URL, username, password, ETC in Map
           //...
        }


       /**
        * Run select statement on current connection and copy the results set in
        * array of Map, where each row is a Map and each column is accessed by
        * field name as key to map
        *
        * @param selectStatement - SQL statement to execute
        * @param statementParams - List of parameters to send to statement
        */        
       public Map[] getSelect(String selectStatement, List statementParams)
       {
           //Code to build statement and copy results to map array
       }
}

To use the class override the ? class like this:
public class SearchAction extends Action
{
  public ActionForward execute(ActionMapping mapping,
                               ActionForm form,
                               HttpServletRequest request,
                               HttpServletResponse response)
      throws Exception
  {
    String searchStr = request.getParameter("Search");
    String keywords=searchStr.split(searchStr);
    if (keywords.length<2)
       throw new Exception("I only support exactly to word searches right now");
    ArrayList keywordList=new ArrayList();
    keyWords.add(keywords[0]);
    keyWords.add(keywords[1]);

    TransactionGateway tMgr=new TransactionGateway(SEARCH_DB);
    Map[] results=tMgr.getSelect("select * from searchDB where keyWord in (?, ?)", keyWords);
    if ((results== null)) {
      return(mapping.findForward("no-Results-Found"));
    } else {
      request.setAttribute("searchResults", results);
      return(mapping.findForward("success"));
    }
  }
}

Thanks for your quick response.

I want to load the tables When the web application is loaded by the server. That was the reason I was planning to extend
"ActionServlet" not the action. I could pass in the database connection parameters as init parameters servlet in the web.xml or read them from a properties file as you suggested. My concern is that Is this the right way to load tables when no actions are called yet.

Thanks
Dasari

Ok
Thank you.