When creating spatial database connections in GeoServer, you might notice that you are frequently provided with two options for the data store as highlighted in the following screenshot:

Vector data sources

In the preceding example, we can see that for Microsoft SQL Server and PostGIS, there is a standard data source option as well as one with (JNDI) after the name. If you noticed this, then you might have thought to yourself, "What's the difference?", and if you are aware of the difference, you might be wondering why you would want to use it over the standard JDBC version.

JNDI appended to the name of the data source stands for Java Naming and Directory Interface, which is a Java technology that enables software to look up objects and data using a common name. It is a fairly broad technology that can be used for a multitude of things such as connecting to an LDAP server or allowing a servlet to look up configuration information from a container. It is this ability...