Two-Tier Database Design

 The two-tier is based on Client-Server architecture.

 The direct communication takes place between client and server.
 There is no mediator between client and server.
 Because of tight coupling a 2 tiered application will run faster.

 Example, Railway reservation application software.

 In this application, both Database and Server are incorporated with each other, so this technology is
called as “Client-Server Technology“.
 The Two-tier architecture is divided into two parts:
1) Client Application (Client Tier / presentation layer)
2) Database (Data Tier / data layer)
 On client application side the code is written for saving the data in the SQL server database. Client sends
the request to server and it process the request & send back with data.
Advantages:
 High portability.
 Systems are accessible by multiple users from any part of the world
 Easy to maintain and modification is bit easy as compare to 3 - tier.
 Communication is faster.
 Due to their less complexity, easy to build and thereby less expensive.
Disadvantages:
 Performance is reduced when clients increase. But generally faster with less number of users due to
tight coupling between client and server.
  More suitable to departmental applications with small scale groupware and simple for Web-based.
Three-Tier Database Design
 Three-tier architecture typically comprises Presentation tier, Business tier or data access tier, and
Data tier.
 Three layers in the three tier architecture are as follows:
1) Client layer (Presentation Layer)
2) Business layer (Application Layer / Middle Tier)
3) Data layer

1) Client Layer :
o It is also called as Presentation Layer which contains UI part of our application.
o This layer is used for the design purpose where data is presented to the user or input is taken from
the user.
o For this, in web communication HTML is used.
2) Business Layer :
o In this layer all business logic written like validation of data, calculations, data insertion etc.
o It acts as an interface between Client Layer and Data Layer.
o It is also called the mediator, helps to make communication faster between client and data layer.
3) Data Layer :
o In this layer actual database is comes in the picture.
o It contains methods to connect with database and to perform insert, update, delete, get data from
database based on our input data.
Advantages:
 Improved Security – Client is not direct access to database.
 Scalability – Each layer is run on different systems.
 Performance is higher than 2-tier.
 High degree of flexibility as an additional tier for integration logic.
 It is fast in communication than 2-tier.
 Improve Data Integrity.
 Easy to maintain and modification is bit easy, won’t affect other modules.
 Proved the possibility of integration of servers where one server can communicate with other servers.
Disadvantages:
 Increase Complexity/Effort

JDBC Drivers **

 JDBC Driver is a software component that enables java application to interact with the database.
 There are four types of JDBC drivers :
1) Type - 1 : JDBC-ODBC Bridge driver (Bridge)
2) Type - 2 : Native-API/partly Java driver (Native)
3) Type - 3 : All Java/Net-protocol driver (Middleware)
4) Type - 4 : All Java/Native-protocol driver (Pure)
1) JDBC-ODBC Bridge driver
o In Type - 1 driver, a JDBC bridge is used to access ODBC drivers installed on each client machine.
o Using ODBC, requires configuring on your system a Data Source Name (DSN) that represents the
target database.
o The Type 1 driver translates all JDBC calls into ODBC calls and sends them to the ODBC driver.
o ODBC is a generic API.
o The JDBC-ODBC Bridge driver is recommended only for experimental use or when no other
alternative is available.
Advantages:
o Easy to use.
o Can be easily connected to any database.
Disadvantages:
o The Bridge driver is not written fully in Java, Type 1 drivers are not portable.
o Performance degraded because JDBC method call is converted into the ODBC function calls.
o The ODBC driver needs to be installed on the client machine.
o Not good for the Web.
o It is the slowest of all driver types.
2) Native-API/partly Java driver
o Type 2 drivers convert JDBC calls into database-specific calls.
o This driver is specific to a particular database.
o The vendor-specific driver must be installed on each client machine.
o If we change the Database, we have to change the native API because it is database specific.
o It is not written entirely in java.

Advantages:
o Performance increases with a Type 2 driver as compare to Type 1 driver, because it eliminates
ODBC's overhead.
Disadvantages:
o The Native driver needs to be installed on the each client machine.
o The Vendor client library needs to be installed on client machine.
o If we change the Database we have to change the native API as it is specific to a database.
o It is platform dependent.
3) Pure Java/Network-protocol/Middleware driver
o Type 3 driver is used three-tier approach to access databases.
o It uses middleware (application server) that converts JDBC calls directly or indirectly into the vendor-
specific database protocol.
o It is fully written in java.

Advantages:
o This driver is server-based, so there is no need for any vendor database library to be present on
client machines.
o It is portable because it is fully written in java.
o It is very flexible allows access to multiple databases using one driver.
o They are the most efficient amongst all driver types.
o The middleware server can provide typical middleware services like caching, load balancing, logging
and auditing.
Disadvantages:
o Network support is required on client machine.
o Maintenance of Network Protocol driver becomes costly because it requires database-specific
coding to be done in the middle tier.
o It requires another server application to install and maintain.
4) Database-protocol/Pure Java driver
o Type 4 driver is an all Java driver which connects directly to the database. It is also known as Thin
Driver.
o It is a database driver implementation that converts JDBC calls directly into a vendor-specific
database protocol.
o The database protocol is vendor specific, the JDBC client requires separate drivers, usually vendor
supplied, to connect to different types of databases.
 o It is fully written in Java language.

Advantages:
o It is platform dependent.
o The client application connects directly to the database server. No translation or middleware layers
are used, performance is quite good.
o No software is required at client side or server side.
Disadvantages:
o Drivers depend on the Database.

JDBC-ODBC Bridge
 The JDBC-ODBC Bridge is a JDBC driver which implements JDBC operations by translating them into
ODBC operations.
 To ODBC it appears as a normal application program.
 The bridge implements JDBC for any database for which an ODBC driver is available.
 The bridge is implemented as the sun.jdbc.odbc Java package and contains a native library used to
access ODBC.
 The bridge is a joint development of Intervolve and Java Soft.
 The bridge is implemented in Java and uses Java native methods to call ODBC.
 The bridge is installed automatically with the JDK as package sun.jdbc.odbc.
 No special configuration is required for the bridge.
 The bridge is used by opening a JDBC connection using a URL with the odbc subprotocol.
Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");
 Before a connection can be established, the bridge driver class, sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver must be
explicitly loaded using the Java class loader.
 When loaded, the ODBC driver creates an instance of itself and registers this with the JDBC driver
manager.
  JDBC used with a Pure Java JDBC driver works well with applets. The bridge driver does not work well
with applets.
 The bridge driver uses the odbc subprotocol. URLs for this subprotocol are of the form:
jdbc:odbc:<data-source-name>[<attribute-name>=<attribute-value>]*
Example:
jdbc:odbc:sybase
jdbc:odbc:mydb;UID=me;PWD=secret

JDBC API *
 JDBC API provides the application to JDBC Manager connection.
 The JDBC API uses a driver manager and database-specific drivers to provide transparent connectivity to
heterogeneous databases.
 Some of the important classes and interface defined in JDBC API are as follows.
Class / Interface Description
Driver Manager The DriverManager class loads and configures a database driver on the client
side.
Connection The Connection class performs connection and authentication to a database
server.
Syntax:
Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection (url, “username”,
“password”);

Statement Useful when you are using static SQL statement at runtime and return the
results by using ResultSet object. The Statement interface cannot accept
parameter. The object is created using the createStatement() method of the
Connection interface.
Syntax:
Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection (url, “username”,
“password”);
Statement stmt = con.createStatement();
PreparedStatement The PreparedStatement interface accepts input parameter at runtime. It is
subclass of the Statement interface. It is precompiled query which can be
executed multiple times. The object is created using the prepareStatement()
method of Connection interface.
Syntax:
Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection (url, “u_name”, “password”);
String query = “insert into emp values(? ,?)”;
PreparedStatement ps = con.prepareStatement(query);
ps.setInt(1,5);
 ps.setString(2, ”New Employee”);
int n = ps.executeUpdate();
CallableStatement The CallableStatement interface can also accept input parameter at runtime.
It is used to call the stored procedures and functions. The object is created
using the preparecall() method of connection interface.
Syntax:
Connection cn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:odbc:exm");
CallableStatement cs = cn.prepareCall("{call proc1()}");
ResultSet rs= cs.executeQuery();
ResultSet The object of ResultSet maintains a cursor pointing to a particular row of data.
Initially, cursor points to before the first row. You can use the next()method of
ResultSet to move from row to row.
DatabaseMetaData DatabaseMetaData interface provides methods to get meta data of a
database such as database product name, database product version, driver
name, driver version etc.
ResultSetMetaData ResultSetMetaData interface provides methods to get meta data of a
Resultset such as table name, column name, column type, total number of
column etc.

JDBC Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages:
 Can read any database if proper drivers are installed.
 No content conversion required.
 Query and Stored procedure supported.
 Can be used for both Synchronous and Asynchronous processing.
 Zero Configurations for Network Computers.
 Database Connection Identified by URL.
Disadvantages:
 Correct drivers need to be deployed for each type of database.
 Cannot update or insert multiple tables with sequence.
Develop java program using JDBC *

import java.sql.*;

public class DemoDatabase

{
// JDBC driver name and database URL
static final String JDBC_DRIVER = "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver";
static final String DB_URL = "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/Student";

// Database credentials
static final String USER = "root";
static final String PASS = "root";

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception

{
Connection conn = null;
Statement stmt = null;

//STEP 2: Register JDBC driver

Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance();

//STEP 3: Open a connection

System.out.println("Connecting to database...");
conn = DriverManager.getConnection(DB_URL,USER,PASS);

//STEP 4: Execute a query

System.out.println("Creating statement...");
stmt = conn.createStatement();
String sqlQuery;
sqlQuery = "SELECT Id, Name, Branch FROM demo";
ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery(sqlQuery);

//STEP 5: Extract data from result set

while(rs.next())
{
//Retrieve by column name
int id = rs.getInt("Id");
String Name = rs.getString("Name");
String Branch = rs.getString("Branch");

//Display values
 System.out.print("ID: " + id +"\n");
System.out.print("Name: " + Name + "\n");
System.out.print("Branch: " + Branch +"\n");

}
//STEP 6: Clean-up environment
rs.close();
stmt.close();
conn.close();

}
}