Tech moves fast! Stay ahead of the curve with Techopedia! Join nearly 200,000 subscribers who receive actionable tech insights from Techopedia. Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) is an application programming interface (API) which allows the programmer to connect and interact with databases. It provides methods to query and update data in the database through update statements like SQL's CREATE, UPDATE, DELETE and INSERT and query statements such as SELECT. Additionally, JDBC can run stored procedures. Like Java, JDBC is compatible with many platforms like Unix and MAC OS. The JDBC API uses Java standard classes and interfaces to connect to databases. In order to use JDBC to connect Java applications to a specific database server, a JDBC driver that supports the JDBC API for that database server is required. To establish a connection between the Java application and the database, JDBC follows certain steps: