Not quite the right question.
In 'microsoft land', there is a generic way to connect to databses via 'Open Database Connectivity' (ODBC). If you have a database and you want to use it in MS-land, you install the ODBC drivers. This allows the operating system to talk to datbases in a generic way.
Java has a similar concept -
JDBC (which doesn't stand for
Java Database Connectivity, but I think you're supposed to think that it does).
Database vendors put out JDBC drivers which allow you to talk to a database in a generic way - you can almost swap databases and drivers behind the scenes with altering your program.
The JDBC-ODBC bridge is an (unstable) way to treat the ODBC data source as a JDBC data source. It converts what you expect in 'Java land' into what is expected in 'MS land' and vice versa.
Therefore as long as long as you have the ODBC drivers for MySQL on your computer, you can use the JDBC-ODBC bridge to connect to it.
Using the specific JDBC drivers (and the Type 4 drivers at that) is the prefered way to do it.
Hope this clears things up rather than making it worse...
Dave
