Connecting programmatically

While we are discussing JDBC and ODBC Driver Connectors, we must make an honorable mention of a very important use case. This use case is how application programs access the data on the data lakehouse via Databricks SQL. For example, consider the dashboard that we compiled in Figure 5.41 in Chapter 5, The Workbench. The taxi company may build a desktop or a web application that renders this dashboard. To do so, the application must issue SQL queries to the tables via a connection to Databricks SQL. These applications can be programmed in any of the modern languages, such as Java, Python, and Scala, to name a few, using their constructs for working with JDBC and ODBC drivers.

Note

A note of caution: Databricks SQL and the data lakehouse are not a replacement for your relational database management systems or online transactional processing systems.

Application programmers are not the intended audience for this book; however, Databricks SQL can hold...