Introduction
Databases—especially relational databases—are used in thousands of applications, from small home-based applications to huge enterprise systems. To help us write applications that access databases, Java provides a few very handy tools, starting with Java Database Connectivity (JDBC).
JDBC allows Java applications to connect to a myriad of databases, provided you have the correct driver: a Java library designed to communicate with a given database. Once connected, JDBC provides an API for accessing databases in a manner that is mostly generic. You'll only encounter a few areas where you need to know the specifics of the underlying database implementation.