DB-newbie

[Martin Schneider]

Hi,
any ideas how I should do db-connection to my application? It is supposed to be portable meaning that it doesnt matter matter if os is linux or windows etc. Where to start, how to code, just basic information or links, anything?

[Bosun Bello]

I would start with the JDBC tutorial at Sun's site.

[tormod eriksen]

first you must register a driver. this can be done this way:
DriverManager.registerDriver((Driver)Class.forName( <driverpath> ).newInstance())
where <driverpath> is a string with the path to the driverclass on your system.
Then you can use one of the DriverManager.getConnection methods to get a connection.
possible structure:
Connection conn
conn = DriverManager.getConnection( <url> , <username>, <password > )
the three arguments to getConnection are strings.
link to the DriverManager class in the java 1.3 api : http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/sql/DriverManager.html
if you can't figure out the format for the url to use, check out the documentation for the database you are trying to connect to.
hope it helps!
[ Edited by Dave to remove smilies ]
[ May 30, 2002: Message edited by: David O'Meara ]

[Martin Schneider]

Ok,
so lets say I want to install my application to computer that has windows as operating system and access as db. I put these lines into my source:

  
Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");
Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:odbc:myDb");

?
And if I want to use some other db then I put something else? What Im asking is can I control only by those two lines connecting to database and I dont have to do any other changes?
[ Edited by Dave to remove smilies ]
[ May 30, 2002: Message edited by: David O'Meara ]

[tormod eriksen]

to a certain extent you can control connecting to a datebase with these two statements (register the driver, and opening a connection)
but drivers for different databases implements a different set of the methods defined in the jdbc api.
so if you change from one database/driver, to another, then there may be some methods that you use, that isn't implemented by the new database/driver.
if you stick to 'basic' api calls you should be pretty safe with most databases/drivers.

[Martin Schneider]

Okay, thanks.
I think I stick with the basic I guess those method available from db's are listed somewhere...

[tormod eriksen]

if not actually providing a simple list over supported methods, there's probably some documentation available, possibly downloadable from the db vendors website, which includes topics such as hints to what jdbc version, methods it supports, examples on use and installation instructions.
here is a link to the sdk 1.3 api listing. with this comes the api for jdbc 2, which you will find under java.sql.
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/index.html
here's a link to a place where you can search for information on jdbc drivers.
http://industry.java.sun.com/products/jdbc/drivers
i would think that all major relational databases support basic jdbc plus more or less advanced.