Hi Friends,

This article will help you to identify basic connectivity using JDBC driver in Java. There are only four categories of JDBC driver provided by SUN, Type 1, 2, 3, and 4, which is explained below

Type 1: JDBC-ODBC (Bridge Driver)

In a Type 1 driver, a JDBC bridge is used to access ODBC drivers installed on each system. One can configure ODBC on his system in a DSN ( Data Source Name) which will represent target of that database.

It was mostly used driver as it configures database in Access. But nowadays it is used only for test purpose besides that other DBMS drivers are being used.

Type 2: JDBC-Native API Driver

In a Type 2 driver, JDBC API calls are converted into native C/C++ API calls, which are unique to the database. These drivers are basically provided by the database vendors only and used in the same manner as the JDBC-ODBC Bridge. So vendor specific driver needs to be used on user system.

Type 3: JDBC-Net pure Java

In Type 3 driver, a three-tier approach is used for accessing databases. Basically, network sockets are used to communicate with a middle-ware application server, which are required by DBMS and forwarded to database server. This driver is extremely flexible, because it requires no code installation on system and a single driver can process more than one database.

Type 4: 100% Pure Java

Type 4 driver is a pure Java-based driver which communicates directly with the vendor's database through socket connections. It is very highly used driver because of the proprietary nature of their network protocols and database vendors usually supply type 4 drivers.

Hope you find it useful in your interview questions.