Adding the required dependencies

The first batch of dependencies to add to the Maven pom.xml file are those for the web processing and rendering:

<dependency>
  <groupId>io.vertx</groupId>
  <artifactId>vertx-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>io.vertx</groupId>
  <artifactId>vertx-web-templ-freemarker</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>com.github.rjeschke</groupId>
  <artifactId>txtmark</artifactId>
  <version>0.13</version>
</dependency>

The second set of dependencies are those required for JDBC database access:

<dependency>
  <groupId>io.vertx</groupId>
  <artifactId>vertx-jdbc-client</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.hsqldb</groupId>
  <artifactId>hsqldb</artifactId>
  <version>2.3.4</version>
</dependency>

The Vert.x JDBC client library provides access to any JDBC-compliant database, but of course our project needs to have a JDBC driver on the classpath.

HSQLDB is well-known relational database that is written in Java. It is quite popular when used as an embedded database to avoid the requirement of having a third-party database server running separately. It is also popular for unit and integration testing as it offers a (volatile) in-memory storage.

HSQLDB as an embedded database is a good fit to get us started. It stores data in local files, and since the HSQLDB library Jar provides a JDBC driver the Vert.x JDBC configuration will be straightforward.