Introduction

NOTE: The material in this chapter is an updated excerpt from JDBCTM API Tutorial and Reference, Second Edition: Universal Data Access for the JavaTM 2 Platform, published by Addison Wesley, ISBN 0-201-43328-1. This document is intended as an overview of the major interfaces and classes and therefore does not cover all of the new features in the JDBCtm 3.0 API. For a more hands-on approach, the JDBC home page at
http://java.sun.com/products/jdbc
has links to basic and advanced tutorials. For complete information on the JDBC 3.0 API, consult the JDBC 3.0 Specification and the JDBC 3.0 API Specification (JavadocTM comments), available from
http://java.sun.com/products/jdbc/download

The JDBCTM API is the application programming interface that provides universal data access for the JavaTM platform. In other words, you use the JDBC API to work with a relational database or other source of data in an application written in the Java programming language.