Apparently the Oracle JDBC driver supports fail over based on connection creation. I think it will support tnsnames parsing, but I’m not sure. This is supported though:
jdbc:oracle:thin:@(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)
(HOST=example.com)(PORT=1521))
(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)
(HOST=failover.example.com)(PORT=1521))
(FAILOVER=true)(LOAD_BALANCE=false)
(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVER=DEDICATED)(SID=foo)))
Not the nicest format, but you only have to do it once and it seems to work pretty well.
cool