This section provides overview information on Oracle JDBC drivers.
Oracle provides 4 different types of JDBC drivers, for use in different deployment scenarios.
1. JDBC OCI client-side driver: This is a JDBC Type 2 driver that uses Java native methods
to call entrypoints in an underlying C library. That C library, called OCI (Oracle Call Interface),
interacts with an Oracle database. The JDBC OCI driver requires an Oracle client installation
of the same version as the driver.
The use of native methods makes the JDBC OCI driver platform specific.
Oracle supports Solaris, Windows, and many other platforms. This means that the Oracle JDBC OCI driver
is not appropriate for Java applets, because it depends on a C library.
2. JDBC Thin client-side driver: This is a JDBC Type 4 driver that uses Java to connect directly to Oracle.
It implements Oracle's SQL*Net Net8 and TTC adapters using its own TCP/IP based Java socket implementation.
The JDBC Thin driver does not require Oracle client software to be installed, but does require the server
to be configured with a TCP/IP listener.
Because it is written entirely in Java, this driver is platform-independent.
The JDBC Thin driver can be downloaded into any browser as part of a Java application.
3. JDBC Thin server-side driver: This is another JDBC Type 4 driver that uses Java to connect directly
to Oracle. This driver is used internally within the Oracle database.
This driver offers the same functionality as the client-side JDBC Thin driver (above),
but runs inside an Oracle database and is used to access remote databases.
4. JDBC Server-Side Internal driver: This is another JDBC Type 2 driver
that uses Java native methods to call entrypoints in an underlying C library.
That C library is part of the Oracle server process and communicates directly
with the internal SQL engine inside Oracle.
The driver accesses the SQL engine by using internal function calls and thus avoiding any network traffic.
This allows your Java code running in the server to access the underlying database in the fastest possible manner.
It can only be used to access the same database.
Obviously, I selected "JDBC Thin client-side driver" to for my tutorial tests, because I don't want to install
any other native libraries.
Of course, you also connect your Java programs with JDBC-ODBC bridge and Oracle ODBC driver to Oracle database server.
