What are JDBC Drivers?
JDBC Drivers are set of classes that enables the Java application to communicate with databases. Java.sql that ships with JDK contains various classes for using relational databases. But these classes do not provide any implementation, only the behaviours are defined. The actual implementaions are done in third-party drivers. Third party vendors implements the java.sql.Driver interface in their database driver. JDBC Drivers Types Sun has defined four JDBC driver types. These are: • Type 1: JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver The first type of JDBC dirver is JDBC-ODBC Bridge which provide JDBC access to any ODBC complaint databases through ODBC drivers. Sun’s JDBC-ODBC bridge is example of type 1 driver. • Type 2: Native -API Partly – Java Driver Type 2 drivers are developed using native code libraries, which were originally designed for accessing the database through C/C++. Here a thin code of Java wrap around the native code and converts JDBC commands to DBMS-specific native calls. • Type 3: JDBC