Yes, he might run into security problems but note that normally Sockets can
be connected from an applet back to the host where the applet was downloaded
from. So, if your database and your web server are on the same host, you are
in luck. But if your database and webserver are on different machines, you
will need more security privileges. That is standard stuff regarding
applets. And, only the the use of pure Java jdbc drivers will work with
applets. They are fully downloadable and do not require any client-side
configuration.  Use of the jdbc-odbc bridge from an untrusted applet running
in a browser isn't allowed. The jdbc-odbc bridge doesn't allow untrusted
code to call it for security reasons. Odbc is native code, so once odbc is
called the Java programming language can't guarantee that a security
violation won't occur.

The "No suitable driver" is an exception that, most likely, occurs when
calling the DriverManager.getConnection method. This is because you couldn't
load the appropriate jdbc driver before calling the method or if you have an
invalid jdbc url.

I agree with Robert that it might be a bad idea using jdbc from an applet.
Often you want the database to run on a diferent machine than the web server
does. So tunneling the database calls is a better approach and that also
allows you to change the datasource without redistributing the applets.

/Klas