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→JDBC
# Drivers table http://devapp.sun.com/product/jdbc/drivers
# [http://jdbc.postgresql.org/documentation/docs.html PostgreSQL JDBC Documentation]
:To make sure that the Driver class passes through the class loader, you can do a lookup by class name, as shown in the Java code snippet in this example.
<code> try {
Class.forName("org.postgresql.Driver");
} </code>
:Class.forName is a method that finds a class by name. In this case, you look for the Driver. This causes the class loader to search through the CLASSPATH and find a class by that name. If it finds it, the class loader will then read in the binary description of the class. If it does not find it, it will throw a ClassNotFoundException, in which case you can print out an error message to that effect. If you reach this state, you either haven't built the driver correctly, or the .jar file is not in your classpath.
:Once you have registered the Driver class, you need to request a connection to a PostgreSQL database. To do this, you use a class called DriverManager. The DriverManager class is responsible for handling JDBC URLs, finding an appropriate driver, and then using that driver to provide a connection to the database.
JDBC URLs are of the following format, in three colon-delimited parts:
<code> databasename --- //hostname/databasename ------ //hostname:portnumber/databasename</code>
:In the first case, the PostgreSQL database is running on the local machine, on the default port number. The databasename is the literal name of the database you wish to connect to. The second case is used for when you want to specify a hostname and a database. This also uses the default port number. The third case allows you to specify a port number as well. Even if you use the first type of URL, the JDBC connection will always be made via TCP/IP.
:For the purposes of the examples from now on, this chapter will use the URL: jdbc:postgresql://localhost/booktown, meaning you are connecting to host localhost and database booktown. With that in mind, try to make a connection, using all you have learned so far. Example 12-2 shows a simple Java program that opens a JDBC connection to the booktown database. If you run the example yourself, be sure to replace the username and password with values that will work on your system.
:One issue is that JDBC does not do any client-side SQL parsing or syntax checking. SQL statements are passed off transparently to the database, whether or not they are valid. Therefore, if the SQL is valid on one vendor's database, but invalid on another vendor's database the implementation won't know until the actual connection is made and the SQL is sent across. Sun is attempting to deal with this problem, and there may be some provisions made to correct this, either in later versions of JDBC or in a different standard. Another issue is that each vendor has additional helper classes specific to that vendor. For instance, PostgreSQL has extensions for geometric data types. Other vendors won't support these extensions; they are specific to PostgreSQL. If you use such vendor-specific classes, your program will not work with another JDBC database, despite using the JDBC "standard."[http://www.commandprompt.com/ppbook/c20820]
