SQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Chapter 5. Database Programming

While SQL plays an important role in standardizing the communication with different RDBMSs, a missing piece still remains for those who want to write database software applications. The missing piece is the database programming Application Programming Interface (API) used to transport SQL statements to and process their results from an RDBMS. While all the database platforms discussed in this book provide their own proprietary interfaces for database application developers, this chapter focuses on two commonly used APIs that provide a consistent interface across database platforms. Specifically, this chapter introduces you to:

ADO.NET

ADO.NET is Microsoft’s high-level database programming API on the .NET platform. The ADO.NET API is a collection of .NET interfaces that are accessible from any of the .NET languages. The primary benefits of ADO.NET are ease of use, portability within the .NET platform, XML integration, and access to data sources other than relational databases. The ADO.NET examples covered in this book are written in C#; however, ADO.NET is also available from Visual Basic and the other .NET languages.

JDBC

JDBC, or Java Database Connectivity, was developed primarily by Sun Microsystems to be the primary database programming API for the Java language. JDBC is the most popular database programming API for the Java language and offers operating-system portability, reasonable performance for most applications, and a well-documented interface. ...