mcp servers intro blog

Author: maxandersen

_posts/2025-01-28-introducing-mcp-jdbc.adoc

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+---
+layout: post
+title: 'Introducing Model Context Protocol servers project'
+date: 2025-01-28
+tags: ai
+synopsis: Introducing the Model Context Protocol servers project which provides a set of MCP servers implemented using Quarkus and Java. Starting with JDBC, filesystem and JavaFX.
+author: maxandersen
+---
+:imagesdir: /assets/images/posts/mcpservers
+ifdef::env-github,env-browser,env-vscode[:imagesdir: ../assets/images/posts/mcpservers]
+
+Today, I'm excited to introduce the Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers project.
+
+Model Context Protocol is the recent approach to enable AI models to interact with your applications and services in a nice decoupled way.
+
+There is already a lot of MCP servers implemented in other languages, but this project is as far as I know the first one to 
+provide a set of MCP servers implemented using Java and at least uniquely Quarkus.
+
+Intended to show-case the capabilities of the Model Context Protocol, and inspiration for what you can do with it - especially in Java.
+
+== The Servers
+
+At time of writing there are three servers implemented:
+
+JDBC:: Let your AI app introspect and interact to any JDBC-compatible database
+
+Filesystem:: Access the file system 
+
+JavaFX:: Draw on a JavaFX canvas
+
+Each server is implemented using Quarkus and Java, and each server is available to easily run using JBang.
+
+== How to use the servers
+
+The general setup is to install JBang (no need for Java, Quarkus or any other Java tool installed).
+
+Then in your MCP client configure it with:
+
+`jbang [server-name]@quarkiverse/quarkus-mcp-servers [arguments]`
+
+Thus for example to run the JDBC server to connect to a MariaDB database you would do:
+
+`jbang mcp-jdbc-server@quarkiverse/quarkus-mcp-servers jdbc:mariadb://localhost:3306/test --user root --password mysecretpassword`
+
+and if you use a client that is compatible with Claude Desktop config this is how it would look for enabling all the servers:
+
+```json
+{
+  "mcpServers": {
+    "jdbc": {
+      "command": "jbang",
+      "args": [
+        "jdbc@quarkiverse/quarkus-mcp-servers",
+        "jdbc:sqlite:%{https://github.com/jpwhite3/northwind-SQLite3/raw/refs/heads/main/dist/northwind.db}"
+      ]
+    },
+    "jfx": {
+      "command": "jbang",
+      "args": [
+        "jfx@quarkiverse/quarkus-mcp-servers"
+      ]
+    },
+    "files": {
+      "command": "/jbang",
+      "args": [
+        "filesystem@quarkiverse/quarkus-mcp-servers",
+        "~/code/quarkusio/quarkus",
+        "~/code/jbangdev/jbang",
+      ]
+    }
+  }
+}
+```
+
+There are more examples for each server in their respective README files. 
+
+== Conclusion
+
+This project is a fun way to show-case the capabilities of the Model Context Protocol, and inspiration for what you can do with it - especially in Java.
+
+I hope you will find it useful and fun to play with.
+