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I've used JDBC in several applications now to query Derby, PostgreSQL and now MySQL databases. I guess I'm choking on some basic terminology in my attempt to understand what is actually going on underneath the hood. Several terms I've seen batted around:

  • ODBC
  • JDBC Driver
  • Bridge
  • JDBC-ODBC Bridge

For each of those I did my best to do some digging and gain an understanding of what they are, what they do, and how they relate to one another. I believe I'm about 70% of the way there, I just can't seem to find anything (articesl, blogs, docs, etc.) that tie everything together nicely and confirm my suspicions.

It seems that ODBC is a C library (perhaps a DLL?) that programs can use to communicate with RDBM systems (such as PostgreSQL and MySQL). All queries to these systems flow in and out of this library on a given system.

The JDBC-ODBC bridge is a Java component that contains native code that allows JDBC to communicate with that ODBC library on a given system.

JDBC is a pure Java API for querying RDBM systems.

A JDBC driver (such as a PostgreSQL-JDBC Driver) is where I'm really having trouble. If all RDBM systems follow RDBMS standards, and can communicate with the ODBC library, then why does JDBC need different "drivers" for each of them?

What are these drivers? What do they do? Why are they necessary? Also clarification on any other assertions I've made here would be enormously appreciated. Thanks in advance!

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Related:… Get the newest if possible. – BalusC Nov 11 '11 at 18:49
up vote 6 down vote accepted

You are almost there. Good question.

What are these drivers: A pure JDBC driver is a driver written in Java, that does not need an ODBC driver to work. You should only use ODBC drivers (through JDBC-ODBC bridge) when you don't have a direct JDBC driver for your database (which is extremely rare, since most {if not all} databases support JDBC nowadays).

A pure JDBC has the advantage of not needing ODBC. ODBC is usually hard to configure, and requires a database native client library to be installed on the system (such as Oracle OCI, or Sybase CT Library).

It used to be the case that ODBC or native drivers were chosen for performance reasons, but I think today pure Java/JDBC perform almost as good as their native/ODBC counterparts.

What do they do: the same as ODBC. A standardized Java API to access relational databases.

Why are they necessary: They are necessary because it simpler to work with them, you just need the JDBC library JAR and your URL connection. Opposed to: native client library + ODBC driver + JDBC-ODBC configuration. It's also the case that every single database has its own network protocol to perform queries against it, and to get results back. So you need one driver for each database vendor. Each one of them implements the specific protocol it needs to connect to its relational database manager. If you were on a world where all database shared the same SQL language and the same communication protocol, you would only need one driver. But that won't happen any time soon.

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Thanks Pablo - so should I understand JDBC (the Java API) to actually "sit on top of" or "depend upon" the correct JDBC Driver (DB-specific) that is supplied at runtime? – IAmYourFaja Nov 11 '11 at 19:08
@zharvey: that's EXACTLY right. – Pablo Santa Cruz Nov 11 '11 at 19:20
Thank you for the well-informed, unassuming answer! – IAmYourFaja Nov 12 '11 at 16:28

ODBC and JDBC are equivalent. They both use drivers to transform ODBC (or JDBC) calls into the native database commands. ODBC is older and written in C/C++, while JDBC is written in Java. When JDBC came out, there were no JDBC drivers for most DBs, so they created the JDBC-ODBC driver to allow people to utilize the already available ODBC drivers. This is rarely used now, since almost every DB has a pure Java JDBC driver

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Thanks Andres...but what about the Java JDBC drivers (for each DB). Why are they necessary? What do they do? – IAmYourFaja Nov 11 '11 at 18:51
Well, they translate JDBC commands (which are standard), to native database protocol (which are non standard). MS SQL Server protocol is very different from Oracle's protocol. JDBC allows you to run the same commands against both, just using a different driver. Makes sense? – Andres Olarte Nov 11 '11 at 18:55
Yes makes great sense Andres. It was a very close tie but I have to give the best answer (in my humble opinion) to Pablo for several completely-subjective reasons. Thank you very much for answering my question though, and I am upvoting your response. – IAmYourFaja Nov 12 '11 at 16:28

Just because DBs use "standard" SQL (and that's in quotes for a reason), does not mean that the DB use the same lower level protocol for communication. SQL is simply a syntax, but not a protocol.

The protocols for Postgres and, say, Oracle are wildly different and offer different features, even though they both use similar SQL features.

SQL itself, while standard, has wide deviations in implementations. MySQL for example is notorious for being less SQL compliant than other DBs. While much SQL used today is portable across DBs, there is much that is not.

JDBC and ODBC are kindred spirits. They provide a shared interface that your application can use to talk to an RDBS. They also provided a common model for vendors to implement. These are the drivers.

Vendors implement a driver to allow a JDBC/ODBC compliant program talk to their database. The drivers task is convert ODBC/JDBC calls in to the appropriate SQL or and other control calls for the database.

The JDBC/ODBC Bridge is a JDBC driver that talks to an existing ODBC driver. It's an abomination. Don't use it. Every database of note today has JDBC drivers. And stick with "type 4" JDBC drivers if at all possible, since these are native Java rather than "type 2" drivers that use JNI to a binary. Buggy type 4 drivers give exceptions, buggy type 2 drivers give JVM crashes which nuke your appserver. No thanks.

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Thanks Will - please see my comment to Pablos Santa Cruz's answer - I have the same question for you! – IAmYourFaja Nov 11 '11 at 19:09

You're right; you're very close to having the full picture!

JDBC and ODBC are conceptually very similar. They're both frameworks for interacting with databases. JDBC is Java-specific, while ODBC is Windows-specific. That said, both JDBC and ODBC are actually toothless APIs. In Java terminology, JDBC is actually a set of unimplemented interfaces. While they specify a behavioral contract, they don't inherently know how to talk to any specific database. That's where drivers come in.

Let's talk specifically about JDBC here. JDBC drivers are concrete implementations of the JDBC interfaces that actually know how to talk to an underlying database engine. JDBC guarantees that a ResultSet from the MySQL JDBC driver will behave the same way as a ResultSet from the Postgres JDBC driver.

As others have pointed out, a JDBC/ODBC bridge is just a bit of glue to make code written for JDBC to work with ODBC infrastructure. Generally, that only makes sense if you know with certainty you're writing Java for Windows exclusively; ODBC is Windows-specific, but JDBC is (in theory) cross-platform.

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  • Jdbc is the java way to connect to a database using dricers written in java (since JDBC4).
  • ODBC is the MS Windows way to connect to a database, these drivers are usually written in C
  • A JDBC-ODBC Bridge is something rather old, in early days of java there were not all drivers in a JDBC version available, so the build a generic bridge beteween JDBC and already existing ODBC drivers.
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Thanks stacker - please take a look at my comment to Andres' answer. I have the same question for you! – IAmYourFaja Nov 11 '11 at 18:52
@zharvey The bridge is translating the Jdbc Api to the Odbc Api, thus such a connection depends on the odbc driver. – stacker Nov 11 '11 at 19:20

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