Introduction to JDBC

In an enterprise application, business data should be stored in a persistent storage area in such a way that it can be retrieved efficiently and in programming language independent manner.

Database Management Systems (DBMSs) allow us to store data permanently in the databases and retrieve it in a language independent way. Databases are good at storing data but poor at processing and presenting it. High level languages like Java are made for data processing and presenting and hence are efficient in this task but poor at storage. Hence these both form integral components of a business application. Since each has a specific role, interaction between them is inevitable.

The strength of Java is its methods. However, to retrieve data from the database these method calls cannot be used. No DBMS is capable of understanding Java method calls. DBMSs use SQL to interact with the database. Java cannot process SQL statements and SQL syntax. These are called heterogeneous environments. Thus, its clear that Java - Database interaction though mandatory, cannot be achieved directly.

What is JDBC?

1. To enable Java - Database communication in heterogeneous environments (such stated above), Sun Microsystems created a technology called JDBC.

2. JDBC is a J2SE technology.

3. JDBC is an API (Application Programming Interface) - a set of library methods that enable Java - Database comunication.

4. JDBC is a specification.

5. JDBC is a service technology.

JDBC is used by any kind of Java program (Servlets, JSP, Applets, Swing, etc) to communicate with any database(Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySQL, Informix, Sybase, etc) in a standard manner.

Any Java program communicating with the database is a JDBC application.