Using JDBC to Connect to a Database

Once your environment is all set up, you are ready to start sending SQL commands to your database using JDBC. To do so, you will need to first connect to the database, which is a fairly simple process. Specifically, you will need to load the database driver and then request a connection.

These two things are achieved with the following lines of code:

Class.forName([LOCATION OF DRIVER]);
Connection jdbcConnection = 
      DriverManager.getConnection
      ([LOCATION OF DATASOURCE]);

For example, to connect to my Access (I specified the "Access" DataSource Name in the 32-bit ODBC control panel. The name "Access" corresponds to my Test_db.mdb file created by MsAccess) datasource I use the following:

Class.forName(sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver);
Connection jdbcConnection = 
   DriverManager.getConnection
   (jdbc:odbc:Access);

Note that the JdbcOdbcDriver is part of the basic JDK distribution (You can find it in the classes.zip file in the "lib" directory probably). If you are using a driver other than ODBC, you should check to see what syntax it requires for specifying data source name. mSQL, for example, uses something like

Connection jdbcConnection = 
       DriverManager.getConnection
       (jdbc:msql://hostname:9999/test_db");

Preparing a Statement Object

After you have setup a connection to the database, you will need to instantiate a statement object that you can use to pass SQL back and forth between the database and your application. Creating a statement object is simple and follows the form:

Class.forName(sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver);
Connection jdbcConnection = 
       DriverManager.getConnection
       (jdbc:odbc:Access);
Statement sql = jdbcConnection.createStatement();

JDBC Application Environment Setup
Introduction to Databases for the Web | Table of Contents
Using JDBC to Query a Database