Yet another 21 days book. This time on JDBC. For those who do not know, JDBC is the Java DataBase Connectivity API. Once you have started to create Java applications, the next step is to link to your data-base, which is where JDBC comes in. It provides an API that allows Java to connect to any database - very useful where there are many databases in use, as in a typical company, as the (Java) code only has to be written once, keeping the Java philosophy alive.

For those new to database programming, do not fear, help is at hand! By the end of day 2 you will have managed to grasp all of the basics required to create a SQL database. The fact this 'day' is 30 pages long, or 15% of the book, is neither here nor there! This is where the '21 days...' books tend to fail, in either fitting the subject to a single day, or providing too much material for a single day. At least the book is the later, rather than miss details out.

The JDBC API is all introduced by the end of week 1, along with the calls to access the database. Next the JDBC objects are dispensed with in a few days, leaving the applet connectivity for the last week. The aim is plausible, in getting to grips with everything in 3 weeks, but as you might gather I found it tended to take longer, especially by the time you experimented with the various components. Saying that, the subject is well covered, especially for those new to databases.

If you program in Java and need to hook up to a database, this may well be the book you are after.