Using JDBC to Create Database Objects

By James W. Cooper
2003-05-24

ODBC

It would be nice if we could somehow write code that was independent of the particular vendor's database and that would allow us to get the same results from any of these databases without changing our calling program. If we could only write some wrappers for all of these databases so that they all appeared to have similar programming interfaces, this would be quite easy to accomplish.

Microsoft first attempted this feat in 1992, when they released a specification called Object Database Connectivity. It was supposed to be the answer for connection to all databases under Windows. Like all first software versions, this suffered some growing pains, and another version was released in 1994, which was somewhat faster, as well as more stable. It also was the first 32-bit version. In addition, ODBC began to move to other platforms than Windows and has by now become quite pervasive in the PC and Workstation world. ODBC drivers are provided by nearly every major database vendor.

However, ODBC is not the panacea we might at first suppose. Many database vendors support ODBC as an "alternate interface" to their standard one, and programming in ODBC is not trivial. It is much like other Windows programming, consisting of handles, pointers and options that make it hard to learn. Finally, ODBC is not an independently-controlled standard. It was developed and is being evolved by Microsoft, which, given the highly competitive software environment we all work in, makes its future hard to predict.

Tutorial Pages:
» What is a Database?
» Getting Data out of Databases
» Kinds of Databases
» ODBC
» What Is JDBC?
» Installing and Using JDBC
» Types of JDBC Drivers
» Two-Tier and Three-Tier Models
» Writing JDBC Code to Access Databases
» Registering Your Database with ODBC
» Connecting to a Database
» Accessing the Database
» The ResultSet
» ResultSetMetaData
» DatabaseMetaData
» Getting Information on Tables
» Executing SQL Queries, Printing out ResultSets, A Simple JDBC Program
» Building Higher Level JDBC Objects
» Building a Database Object, A Visual Database Program
» Executing a Query
» The Query Result Dialog
» Example Files
» Summary

First published by IBM DeveloperWorks

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