Story of the JDBC Drivers

The Applets were very famous at starting stages of JAVA. But there was no drivers communicate with the Database.

Tyep-1:

The people were looking for Database connectivity with Java. So Sun created the wrapper on top of the ODBC to connect the database. Using this wrapper the java will communicate with the database through ODBC. This is called JDBC-ODBC Bridge.

JDBC-ODBC Bridge:

Disadvantages:

1. Many layers are involved
2. The performance is poor
3. If the Microsoft changes the ODBC specification, the JDBC-ODBC Bridge will not work
4. The clients need to be configured, if they want to use these drivers

Type-2:

The sun people started working on it and succeeded. So they came up with other drivers called Native JDBC Driver. They created the java wrapper around the native library.

Native JDBC Drivers:

Disadvantages:

1. Many Layers involved
2. The performance is poor
3. The clients need to be configured, if they want to use it

Advantages:

1. They removed the dependency on ODBC
2. Faster than JDBC-ODBC Bridge

Type-3:

This time SUN introduced the new drivers called All Java JDBC Net Drivers. These drivers use middleware to communicate with the database. The middleware component might use any other driver to provide the actual database access.

All Java JDBC Net Drivers:

Disadvantages:

1. Communication with middle ware server
2. Performance is poor

Type-4:

Java is very popular this time. So the database vendors came up with their own drivers to communicate with the database. These drivers are called Native protocol All Java Drivers. These drivers are fully implemented in java. These drivers are directly communicated with the database.