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Originally published at Internet.com[This article assumes you have a basic understanding of Java application and applet programming.]
Suppose you have a set of records in an Access database that you have to view through a front-end tool. You can design a user interface by using various programming languages such as Visual Basic, Visual C++, etc. Java, however, provides a more consistent approach in developing these interfaces through the javax.swing package. Moreover, Java provides the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API, with which you can connect your app to any database designed either using Microsoft Access or SQL Server. In this article, we will examine the basic steps required to handle JDBC using javax.swing for creating user interfaces.
Before proceeding further, let us take a quick look at Microsoft's Object Database Connectivity (ODBC) and the preference of JDBC over ODBC. The ODBC API offers connectivity to almost all databases on almost all platforms and is the most widely used programming interface for accessing relational databases. But ODBC cannot be used directly with Java programs due to various reasons.
1. ODBC uses a C interface. This has drawbacks in security, implementation, robustness, etc. 2. ODBC makes use of pointers (which have been removed from Java)...
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