Java + Access = problems

There are no real JDBC driver for MS Access. Only the
JDBC ODBC bridge. And that is not good.

The syntax to connect is:

Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");
Connection con =
DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:odbc:;Driver={Microsoft Access Driver
(*.mdb)};Dbq=C:\\somedir\\something.mdb;Uid=xxxx;Pwd=yyyy;");

Arne

I've written a medical application also, I used MySQL to ensure
cross-platform. You can install MySQL using the silent install option
and then do some config automatically to make it easy for the user.
Either way . . .

I have a Singleton class that acts as an interface to the database. It
provides methods like

public static void addPatient(Patient patient) {...}

That approach is very programmer friendly. There is also hibernate which
is even better. It wasn't around when I started or I didn't know about
it but it's very good.

You're googling skills might be broken as my first result was:
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/javaqa/2000-09/03-qa-0922-access.html

You will need to scroll down to the resources section at the bottom.
There are links to a Sun tutorial, if you spend the time with these you
will be able to learn it. Make sure you get the driver or nothing will
work. I can't give detailed info about Access. To make things easy you
probably want to manually create a database first so that you have
something to connect to.

 or code that when I cut and paste

Well some of the errors would be good to help use help you. It's most
likely because you don't have the correct jar files. These are the
drivers. Please post the error messages here after reading the above.

Lionel.

Please don't do this.  Since you are a novice, you will inevitably make
mistakes.  That is OK unless you are working on highly critical
projects like medical applications.  So please do your learning on
another type of project.

I have created a toy Access Database application.  It does not do
anything great and it does not follow the best programming practices,
but it does include working code for a connection to an Access
database.  To make it work, you must use the ODBC manager to register
the youraccessdb database.

(1) Since your client must also register the database with the ODBC
manager, I do not consider it easy to install.
(2) If you use a properties.txt file like I did, then it would be
trivial for you to upgrade to a real database when you realize that
Access is only appropriate for toy applications (like mine) and
definitely not highly critical applications (like yours).

=====<SimpleDBApplication.java>=====
public class SimpleDBApplication
{
   public static final void main ( final java . lang . String [ ] args
) throws java . lang . Exception
   {
       final java . sql . Connection connection = getConnection ( ) ;
       try
           {
               application ( connection ) ;
           }
       finally
           {
               connection . close ( ) ;
           }
   }

   /**
    * Create a file called properties.txt with driverClassName
(sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver) and url (jdbc:odbc:youraccessdb).
    **/
   private static final java . sql . Connection getConnection ( )
throws java . io . IOException , java . lang . ClassNotFoundException ,
java . sql . SQLException , java . lang . InstantiationException , java
. lang . IllegalAccessException
   {
       final java . util . Properties properties = new java . util .
Properties ( ) ;
       final java . lang . Class thisClass = SimpleDBApplication .
class ;
       final java . io . InputStream propertiesStream = thisClass .
getResourceAsStream ( "properties.txt" ) ;
       properties . load ( propertiesStream ) ;
       propertiesStream . close ( ) ;
       final java . lang . String driverClassName = properties .
getProperty (
"driverClassName" ) ;
       final java . lang . Class driverClass = java . lang . Class .
forName (
driverClassName ) ;
       final java . lang . Object driverObject = driverClass .
newInstance ( )
;
       final java . sql . Driver driver = ( java . sql . Driver ) (
driverObject ) ;
       java . sql . DriverManager . registerDriver ( driver ) ;
       final java . lang . String url = properties . getProperty (
"url" ) ;
       final java . sql . Connection connection = java . sql .
DriverManager .
getConnection ( url , properties ) ;
       java . sql . DriverManager . deregisterDriver ( driver ) ;
       return ( connection ) ;
   }

   private static final void application ( final java . sql .
Connection connection ) throws java . sql . SQLException
   {
       final java . sql . DatabaseMetaData metadata = connection .
getMetaData
( ) ;
       final boolean supportsTransactions = metadata .
supportsTransactions ( ) ;
       java . lang . System . out . println (
"supportsTransactions:\t" + supportsTransactions ) ;
       final java . lang . String sqlKeywords = metadata .
getSQLKeywords ( ) ;
       java . lang . System . out . println ( "sqlKeywords:\t" +
sqlKeywords ) ;
       printTypeInfo ( metadata ) ;
   }

   private static final void printTypeInfo ( final java . sql .
DatabaseMetaData metadata ) throws java . sql . SQLException
   {
       final java . sql . ResultSet typeInfo = metadata . getTypeInfo
( ) ;
       try
           {
               printTable ( typeInfo ) ;
           }
       finally
           {
               typeInfo . close ( ) ;
           }
   }

   /**
    * See http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/index.html
    **/
   private static final void printTable ( final java . sql . ResultSet
resultSet ) throws java . sql . SQLException
   {
       final java . sql . ResultSetMetaData metadata = resultSet .
getMetaData
( ) ;
       final int columnCount = metadata . getColumnCount ( ) ;
       while ( resultSet . next ( ) )
           {
               for ( int i = 1 ; i <= columnCount ; i ++ )
                   {
                       final java . lang . Object object = resultSet .
getObject ( i ) ;
                       java . lang . System . out . print ( object +
"\t" ) ;
                   }
               java . lang . System . out . println ( ) ;
           }
   }
}
=====</SimpleDBApplication>=====
=====<properties.txt>=====
driverClassName:sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver
url:jdbc:odbc:youraccessdb
=====</properties.txt>=====

I'd consider an embeddable pure-Java DBMS like Derby
http://db.apache.org/derby/

There are many alternatives, some people seem to like
http://www.hsqldb.org/ which has a smaller footprint.

Sample source code at
http://db.apache.org/derby/papers/DerbyTut/embedded_intro.html

You'll need to download and install Derby first and tell NetBeans about it.