Java databases, as a term, can be misleading. A database management system (DBMS) that works with Java could be either a relational DBMS (RDBMS), an object-relational DBMS (ORDBMS), or an object DBMS (ODBMS). Java also works with object-relational mapping products. Information on each of these technologies can be found on this site.
If you want to use a tool that makes the mapping of Java objects to RDBMSs easier, consider object-relational mapping products. Object-relational mapping products integrate Java language capabilities with RDBMSs. Database objects appear as programming language objects in Java. Often, the interface for object-relational mapping products is the same as the interface for ODBMSs. Using an object-relational mapping product means you will have less code to write and, depending on how you use your data, you might have higher performance over an embedded SQL or a call interface such as ODBC or JDBC. See caching for object-relational mapping.
If you are interested in storing Java objects directly, consider ODBMSs for Java databases. ODBMSs use the same object model as Java and allows Java objects to be stored directly with no mapping.
Both techniques use transparent persistence. With transparent persistence, the manipulation and traversal of persistent objects is performed directly by Java in the same manner as in-memory, non-persistent objects.
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Products
The various types of products that work with Java are listed on this site with links to their respective websites:
- Object-relational database products
- Object-oriented database products
- Object-relational mapping products
- Relational database products
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