The JDBC API

Many databases are available, each having its own unique implementation, feature set, programming interface, and so on. The performance tweaks, features, and functionality available vary and depend on the database and platform chosen. Because of these differences, migration from one database to another can be annoying and difficult. Most databases that follow ANSI SQL standards do support similar data types and can get along at some level, yet they do have their differences.

Luckily for Java developers, database access was standardized a while back. The Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API defines a simple set of interfaces for accessing any given database, even flat files. At the time of this writing, JDBC was at version 3.0 with the JDBC 4.0 API on the way (JSR 221). The JDBC API is platform independent, as well as database independent. Therefore, no matter which database or operating system, the JDBC code will look and work the same for the majority of operations. Only when using specific proprietary database features or data types will this be a problem.