Network Computingwww.networkcomputing.com

We used the Type 3 OpenLink driver to successfully connect our applet to several RDBMSes (relational database management systems), including Oracle, DB2, SQL Server and Adaptive Server. The driver proved to be thread-safe when we programmed database connectivity into several concurrently running Java threads. OpenLink gave us several much-needed extensions to JDBC, including backward-scrollable cursors, keyset cursors, bookmarks and support for SQLExtendedFetch and SQLSetPos.

Configuring OpenLink's drivers was easy. We merely specified security and other parameters with simple updates to the OpenLink Request Broker's "Session Rules Book."

INTERSOLV SequeLink Java Edition 4.0
Because of a number of INTERSOLV's optimization techniques, the company's Type 3 JDBC driver was nearly as fast as OpenLink's at accessing database content. These techniques included a piggyback scheme that packed idle message packet space with prefetched data, thus anticipating subsequent database accesses. Another optimization technique deferred execution of client API calls to minimize network traffic. The driver class file, slightly less than 250 KB, loaded more slowly than OpenLink's.

Like OpenLink's UDBC (Universal Database Connectivity), INTERSOLV's universal client gave us single-driver access to Oracle, DB2, SQL Server and Adaptive Server databases. Written entirely in Java, the SequeLink JDBC driver was thread-safe, reliable and secure. It used encryption and multilevel authentication to keep database access packets confidential and authentic, and the Java Proxy component did not decrypt packets as it routed them to and from the database server.

WebLogic jdbcKona
jdbcKona wasn't the fastest or smallest Java data access driver we tested, but it may have been the smartest. Running on top of JDBC, jdbcKona abstracted the process of data access into dataset, record and value concepts. In jdbcKona terms, a dataset contains records that in turn contain value objects. Value objects hold datatype attributes, as well as data values. With jdbcKona's help, we didn't have to pay close attention in our Java programs to details like a data item's structure or type. In a useful extension to the JDBC standard, jdbcKona let us navigate both backward and forward through fetched result sets. It gave us access to Oracle sequences via a Sequences object.

BulletProof Corp. JAGGServer
Best known for the JDesignerPro development environment, BulletProof ships a Java data access component with JDesignerPro called JAGGServer. Applications we built with JDesignerPro contained automatically inserted calls to JAGGServer as well as automatically generated SQL. In the lab, JAGGServer demonstrated some practical, useful JDBC extensions. Invoking stored procedures via JAGGServer was easy, as was triggering the running of server-side executable programs. The product pooled database connections among clients, letting many clients issue SQL statements through just a few connections.

WebLogic Pure Java JDBC Drivers For Informix and SQL Servers
Testing revealed Pure Java JDBC Drivers For Informix and SQL Servers to be faster than BulletProof's JAGGServer but not as quick as OpenLink's or INTERSOLV's JDBC drivers. Pure Java JDBC Drivers For Informix and SQL Servers is a JDBC driver of moderate size (about 120 KB without optional compression or encryption features). It gave our test software access to SQL Server and Adaptive Server databases, but not to DB2 and Oracle. Our threading test, which spawned multiple concurrently running data access Java threads, showed Pure Java JDBC Drivers For Informix and SQL Servers is thread-safe.

IBM Corp. DB2 JDBC Drivers
IBM ships two distinct JDBC drivers with DB2, one for server-side Java applications to use and one for browser-based client applets, each taking very different approaches to database communications. The server-side driver was a bit faster and smaller than its applet-compliant counterpart and invoked DB2's native calling interface as implemented by DB2 CAE (Client Application Enabler) modules. In contrast, the client-side driver used TCP/IP to transfer its requests to a special applet server running on the Web server. Our test applet thus connected to DB2 without having to load non-Java database transport components at the client. This approach to JDBC connectivity, used by several JDBC vendors, let us run the DB2 and Web server software on different computers.