What is Java Database Connectivity?

Java Database Connectivity (or JDBC for short) is a Java API designed to connect and manage relational databasessuch as Postgres, Oracle Database, MySQL, and SQL Server in applications programmed with Java.

The JDBC API uses JDBC drivers to interact with a database. There are different types of JDBC drivers:

• JDBC-ODBC bridge driver: Use JDBC-ODBC bridge driver for testing JDBC applications against an ODBC (Open database connectivity) data source.

• Native driver: Native driver requires a native database API.

• Network driver protocol: Network driver protocol is common; it’s created for a particular vendor’s database.

Using JDBC

When using JDBC to connect and manage a database, JDBC works in the following steps:

• Register the JDBC driver class
• Create a connection to the database
• Create a statement object to perform an SQL query
• Execute the statement object and return a query ResultSet
• Process the ResultSet
• Close ResultSet and statement
• Close the connection

Advantages of JDBC

1. No installation: JDBC comes with every JDK, and you don’t need any additional libraries installed to use it.

2. Database Agnostic: JDBC can read any database as long as the connection is with the proper drivers.

3. Connection pooling: JDBC connection pooling saves time when opening and closing database connections for every user.

4. Easy database access: JDBC low-level database access makes complex SQL queries efficient.

Limitations of JDBC

• With JDBC, each type of database requires a specific driver.

• To prevent SQL injection attacks, JDBC does not allow more than one value to a placeholder.

• The significant programming overhead makes use of JDBC in large-scale projects hard.

• Java Developers using JDBC must know how to write good SQL queries.

Conclusion

In this shot, we defined Java Database Connectivity, its architecture, and how to use it. We also learned its advantages and limitations.