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June 8, 1999
JDBC basics
by Thornton Rose
(example programs by April Rose)
The Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API is used to access databases from Java programs. There are several books available on the subject, but there are just a few things that you need to know to get started. In this article, we present the basics of using JDBC.
Tools
You will need the following tools to write Java programs that use JDBC:
- JDK 1.1 or JDK 1.2 (Java 2)
- A database
- The JDBC driver for your database
- Your favorite text editor.
Depending on the JDBC driver, the database can be anything from dBase files to Oracle. For this article, except for the section on stored procedures, tinySQL was used, because it is small and free (distributed under the GNU General Public License). tinySQL is a very minimal SQL engine that comes with a JDBC driver and supports the following SQL statements:
- SELECT (simple joins, no aggregate functions, no nested queries)
- UPDATE
- INSERT
- DELETE
- CREATE TABLE
- DROP TABLE
Driver
To communicate with your database using JDBC, you will need a JDBC driver. Usually you will get this from the database vendor, but there are several third-party drivers that work with most of the common databases (e.g., Oracle, Sybase). Also, you can use the JDBC-ODBC bridge if you are running your programs on Windows and are not doing anything too serious. The JDBC-ODBC bridge is a driver from Sun that allows Java programs to access databases via Microsoft’s ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) API.
Before you can connect to a database or execute any database statements, the JDBC driver must be loaded. The primary way to do this is to use the
Class.forName() method |
For the JDBC-ODBC bridge, it would look like this:
Class.forName(“ORG.as220.tinySQL.textFileDriver”);
You only have to do this once in your program. After the JDBC driver class has been loaded, it will be available via the DriverManager class, which is used to manage the JDBC drivers that have been loaded.
Class.forName(“sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver”);
Connection
With the JDBC driver loaded, getting a connection is easy. You import the JDBC classes (which are in the java.sql package) and call the
getConnection() |
Here is another fragment that gets a connection to an ODBC data source via the JDBC-ODBC bridge:
import java.sql.*;…
Connection = DriverManager.getConnection(“jdbc:tinySQL”);
Additionally, here is a simple program that loads a JDBC driver, connects to a data source, then closes the connection.
Statements
Once you have an open connection to a database, you can extract and manipulate data using SQL (Structured Query Language) via database statements. You use the
Connection.createStatement() |
Then, you use
Statement dbStatement = dbConnection.createStatement();
Statement.executeQuery() |
Statement.executeUpdate() |
Result sets
To extract data, you use a
SELECT |
Statement.executeQuery() |
next() |
ResultSet.getX() |
getInt() |
Note that you can also use column positions (in the result set) to retrieve columns values, like this:
Here is a simple program that connects to a data source, executes some statements, then displays the contents of a result set:
dbResultSet.getInt(2); // get value of column 2
Stored procedures
Some backend database servers, such as Oracle, provide the ability to store SQL procedures in the database. These procedures can then be executed by external programs to perform database operations. (This is often done to increase performance and to reduce application complexity.) To call a stored procedure using JDBC, you use the CallableStatement class,
Connection.prepareCall() |
Connection.execute() |
Stored procedures can have parameters and a return value. The positions of the return value and the parameters are specified in the statement with questions marks, like this:
Both the return type and the types and values of the parameters must be registered before the procedure can be called. If a parameter or return value is going to come back from the stored procedure (often referred to as an “out” mode parameter), you register the type with
CallableStatement.registerOutParameter() |
If the parameter is being sent into the procedure (often referred to as an “in” mode parameter), you set the value by calling the
CallableStatement.setX() |
The return value is retrieved by calling
dbStoredProc.setString(2, displayName);
CallableStatement.getX() |
Note that the first parameter of
int reportKey = dbStoredProc.getInt(1);
registerOutParameter() |
getX() |
setX() |
Gotchas
- In an applet running in the Internet Explorer Java VM, sometimes the JDBC driver will not load properly using
. A workaround is to instantiate the driver directly, then use it to get a Connection object, like this:Class.forName()
- The JDBC-ODBC bridge is not multithreaded. This means that you cannot execute simultaneous statements or run asynchronous queries with the JDBC-ODBC bridge.
- Closing a statement or a connection can sometimes throw an exception. This is not a major problem, but it is something that should be handled in your programs.
Resources
About the authors
Thornton & April are contract software developers in Atlanta, Ga. Thornton can be reached via e-mail at trose@avana.net
