Sesh Venugopal

Java programs can use the JDBC API to access relational databases, thereby cleanly separating the database system from the application. This approach holds the promise of cross-database portability, i.e., "write once, run on any database." In practice, several stumbling blocks stand in the way of fulfilling this promise. This article shows examples of these stumbling blocks so you can see the common pattern of development. Drawing on this pattern, I'll develop a roadmap you can use to write applications that can work around these stumbling blocks. Finally, I'll demonstrate how the roadmap can be applied to build a portable application. Breakdown of Portability Three general situations in which the portability of code breaks down are using SQL escape syntax, translating external data types to database-specific types, and executing positioned updates on the rows of a ... (more)