What Does Java Database Connectivity Mean?
Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) is an application programming interface (API) which allows the programmer to connect and interact with databases. It provides methods to query and update data in the database through update statements like SQL’s CREATE, UPDATE, DELETE and INSERT and query statements such as SELECT. Additionally, JDBC can run stored procedures.
Like Java, JDBC is compatible with many platforms like Unix and MAC OS.
Techopedia Explains Java Database Connectivity
The JDBC API uses Java standard classes and interfaces to connect to databases. In order to use JDBC to connect Java applications to a specific database server, a JDBC driver that supports the JDBC API for that database server is required.
To establish a connection between the Java application and the database, JDBC follows certain steps:
- Loading the driver: The driver provides a connection to the database.
- Creating the connection: Once the driver is loaded, the next step is to create a connection. The connection object uses a URL in the specified format, which includes the machine name, port number and database name. It communicates with the database object.
- Executing SQL statements: Requires an object for building the SQL statement.
- Returning the resultset: Retrieves and manipulates the database queries. Records can be accessed from the first row to the last row of the database.