Raj Blogs: What are the different type of JDBC drivers?

There are four types of JDBC database driver:

The JDBC/ODBC bridge driver A piece of native C-code that translates a JDBC call to an ODBC call. Use this driver for development, not for industrial-strength application environments. Note that you have to have an ODBC database driver manager + an ODBC database driver installed on the server in addition to the JDBC/ODBC bridge.

Native API partly java driver A piece of native C-code that translates a java JDBC call to a native database call level API. Use this driver for development and deployment. Due to its native code, this driver can only be used by Java Applications with full computer access (i.e. not Applets).

JDBC-Net pure Java driver A piece of pure java code that translates an incoming JDBC call to an outgoing database Net protocol call (such as SQL*Net). Use this driverfor development and deployment. Flexible and powerful, this driver can be used by any Java component and requires only connect access to work.

Native protocol pure Java driver A piece of pure java code that translates an incoming JDBC call to an outgoing database native protocol call (such as Oracle CLI). Use this driver for development and deployment. This driver type is the recommended one for server-side java development unless a type 2 driver has considerable performance advantages