JDBC drivers are client-side adapters (installed on the client machine, not on the server) that convert requests from Java programs to a protocol that the DBMS can understand.
Types[edit]
Commercial and free drivers provide connectivity to most relational-database servers. These drivers fall into one of the following types:
- Type 1 that calls native code of the locally available ODBC driver. (Note: In JDBC 4.2, JDBC-ODBC bridge has been removed[9])
- Type 2 that calls database vendor native library on a client side. This code then talks to database over the network.
- Type 3, the pure-java driver that talks with the server-side middleware that then talks to the database.
- Type 4, the pure-java driver that uses database native protocol.
Note also a type called an internal JDBC driver - a driver embedded with JRE in Java-enabled SQL databases. It is used for Java stored procedures. This does not fit into the classification scheme above, although it would likely resemble either a type 2 or type 4 driver (depending on whether the database itself is implemented in Java or not). An example of this is the KPRB (Kernel Program Bundled) driver[10] supplied with Oracle RDBMS. "jdbc:default:connection" offers a relatively standard way of making such a connection (at least the Oracle database and Apache Derby support it). However, in the case of an internal JDBC driver, the JDBC client actually runs as part of the database being accessed, and so can access data directly rather than through network protocols.
Sources[edit]
- Oracle provides a list of some JDBC drivers and vendors
- Simba Technologies ships an SDK for building custom JDBC Drivers for any custom/proprietary relational data source
- CData Software ships type 4 JDBC Drivers for various applications, databases, and Web APIs.[11]
- RSSBus Type 4 JDBC Drivers for applications, databases, and web services[12]
- DataDirect Technologies provides a comprehensive suite of fast Type 4 JDBC drivers for all major database they advertise as Type 5[13]
- IDS Software provides a Type 3 JDBC driver for concurrent access to all major databases. Supported features include resultset caching, SSL encryption, custom data source, dbShield
- JDBaccess is a Java persistence library for MySQL and Oracle which defines major database access operations in an easy usable API above JDBC
- JNetDirect provides a suite of fully Sun J2EE certified high-performance JDBC drivers.
- JDBCR4 is a service program written by Scott Klement to allow access to JDBC from RPG on the IBM i.[14]
- HSQLDB is a RDBMS with a JDBC driver and is available under a BSD license.
- SchemaCrawler[15] is an open source API that leverages JDBC, and makes database metadata available as plain old Java objects (POJOs)
