What is JDBC?

The Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API is the industry standard for database-independent connectivity between the Java programming language and a wide range of databases – SQL databases and other tabular data sources, such as spreadsheets or flat files. The JDBC API provides a call-level API for SQL-based database access. There are four type of drivers..

JDBC OCI client-side driver: This is a JDBC Type 2 driver that uses Java native methods to call entrypoints in an underlying C library. That C library, called OCI (Oracle Call Interface), interacts with an Oracle database. The JDBC OCI driver requires an Oracle client installation of the same version as the driver.

The use of native methods makes the JDBC OCI driver platform specific. Oracle supports Solaris, Windows, and many other platforms. This means that the Oracle JDBC OCI driver is not appropriate for Java applets, because it depends on a C library.

JDBC Thin client-side driver: This is a JDBC Type 4 driver that uses Java to connect directly to Oracle. It implements Oracle's SQL*Net Net8 and TTC adapters using its own TCP/IP based Java socket implementation. The JDBC Thin driver does not require Oracle client software to be installed, but does require the server to be configured with a TCP/IP listener.

Because it is written entirely in Java, this driver is platform-independent. The JDBC Thin driver can be downloaded into any browser as part of a Java application. (Note that if running in a client browser, that browser must allow the applet to open a Java socket connection back to the server.)

JDBC Thin server-side driver: This is another JDBC Type 4 driver that uses Java to connect directly to Oracle. This driver is used internally within the Oracle database. This driver offers the same functionality as the client-side JDBC Thin driver (above), but runs inside an Oracle database and is used to access remote databases.

JDBC Server-Side Internal driver: This is another JDBC Type 2 driver that uses Java native methods to call entrypoints in an underlying C library. That C library is part of the Oracle server process and communicates directly with the internal SQL engine inside Oracle. The driver accesses the SQL engine by using internal function calls and thus avoiding any network traffic. This allows your Java code running in the server to access the underlying database in the fastest possible manner. It can only be used to access the same database.


JDBC-ODBC Bridge:The JDBC-ODBC Bridge is a JDBC driver that implements JDBC operations by translating them into ODBC operations. To ODBC it appears as a normal application program. The Bridge implements JDBC for any database for which an ODBC driver is available. The Bridge is implemented as the sun.jdbc.odbc Java package and contains a native library used to access ODBC. The Bridge is a joint development of Merant and Java Software.


Before a connection can be established, the bridge driver class, sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver, must either be added to the java.lang.System property named jdbc.drivers, or it must be explicitly loaded using the Java class loader. Explicit loading is done with the following line of code:

Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");