Chapter 2. JDBC
The JDBC[2] API provides Java applications with mid-level access to most database systems, via the Structured Query Language (SQL). JDBC is a key enterprise API, as it’s hard to imagine an enterprise application that doesn’t use a database in some way.
In the first edition of this book, we focused on the original JDBC 1.0 API, and touched briefly on the new features provided by the JDBC 2.0 API. JDBC 2.1 is now a standard component of the J2SE platform, and drivers supporting the upgraded specification are widely available. In this edition, we discuss the JDBC 2.1 API and the JDBC 2.0 Optional Packages (previously known as the JDBC 2.0 Standard Extension) and take a look at the upcoming JDBC 3.0 API.
A word of caution: while the
java.sql
package is not tremendously complex, it
does require grounding in general database concepts and the SQL
language itself. This book includes a brief SQL reference (see Chapter 12, but if you have never worked with a
relational database system before, this chapter is not the place to
start. For a more complete treatment of JDBC and general database
concepts, we recommend Database Programming with JDBC and
Java by George Reese (O’Reilly).
JDBC Architecture
Different database systems have surprisingly little in common: just a similar purpose and a mostly compatible query language. Beyond that, every database has its own API that you must learn to write programs that interact with the database. This has meant that writing code capable ...
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