JDBC vs ORM

In this section we will examine the differences and similarities between JDBC and ORM technologies. Both these technologies are used to save the data into persistence storage for future reference.

What is JDBC?

JDBC stands for Java Database Connectivity, is a set of Java API for accessing the relational databases from Java program. The Java API enables the programmers to execute the SQL statements against the JDBC complaint database.

JDBC allows the programmers to quickly develop small Java applications that interact with the databases. To develop an application programmer has to develop the code to connect to the database and then write the code to execute the query. Once the query is successfully executed and result is retrieved from the database, programmer can read the data programmatically from the result set object. Here is the simple example of JDBC example program.

import java.sql.*;

public class AllTableName{
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     System.out.println( "Listing all table name in Database!" );
     Connection con = null ;
     String url = "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/" ;
     String db = "jdbctutorial" ;
     String driver = "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" ;
     String user = "root" ;
     String pass = "root" ;
     try {
       Class.forName(driver);
       con = DriverManager.getConnection(url+db, user, pass);
       try {
         DatabaseMetaData dbm = con.getMetaData();
         String[] types = { "TABLE" };
         ResultSet rs = dbm.getTables(null,null, "%" ,types);
         System.out.println( "Table name:" );
         while (rs.next()){
           String table = rs.getString( "TABLE_NAME" );
           System.out.println(table);
           con.close();
         }
       }
       catch (SQLException s){
         System.out.println( "No any table in the database" );
       }
     }
     catch (Exception e){
       e.printStackTrace();
     }
   }
}

Above program retrieves the names of all tables present in the database and then displays on the console.

Advantages of JDBC

Clean and easily for small programs
JDBC provides good performance with large amount of data
Small JDBC programs can be developed very easily
Very good for small applications

Disadvantages of JDBC

JDBC is not easily if it is used in large projects. There is a big programming overhead.
Programmer must hardcode the Transactions and concurrency code in the application.
Handling the JDBC connections and properly closing the connection is also a big issue. Properly closing the connection is must.
JDBC is not good for big applications

What is ORM?

ORM stands for Object Relational Mapping, is another technology to access the data databases. Here business object is directly mapped to the database tables with the help of ORM framework.

Here are the benefits of ORM technology

No need to deal with the SQL Queries to save and retrieve the data
Simple configuration
Standardized API to persist the business objects
Fast development of application
Concurrency support
Excellent cashing support for better performance of the application
Injected transaction management
Configurable logging
Easy to learn and use

Disadvantages of ORM

Slow performance in case of large batch updates
Little slower than JDBC