Connect to Microsoft SQL Server in Java: 4 Easy Steps

Since data is the new crude oil, data security has become one of the utmost essential requirements in the current tech-driven world.

Traditional relational database management systems like Microsoft SQL Server provide enterprises with high-level encryption and security protocols to protect their users’ and applications’ data.

For highly secure automated data access and transaction processing, enterprises can use Microsoft SQL Server with Java, a well-known software language used primarily for computing.

The combination of Java and Microsoft SQL Server databases is highly compatible and widely used to build highly secure applications.

In this article, you will learn about Java, Microsoft SQL Server, and how to use the JDBC driver for Java Connect to Microsoft SQL Server database correctly.

Prerequisites

• Basic knowledge on Integration

Connecting Java to Microsoft SQL Server

Java is an adaptable programming language for creating complex interactive applications and games.

Since it is highly secure, many enterprises use Java in the form of JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) to connect databases and servers with web applications.

JDBC is a call-level API that uses standard SQL statements and passes them as strings to API for performing operations on relational database management systems (RDMS).

Connecting Java to Microsoft SQL Server helps automate access to the databases where you can directly handle data and work on them in an automated script.

You can use this connection to verify results, delete data and even update specific data according to your requirements. 

Follow the instructions below to properly connect Java and the Microsoft SQL Server database:

• Step 1: Download Microsoft JDBC Driver
• Step 2: JDBC URL for Microsoft SQL Server
• Step 3: Register drive and Specify connection
• Step 4: Executing SQL Commands

Step 1: Download Microsoft JDBC Driver

To get started with Java Connect to Microsoft SQL Server, you must have an appropriate JDBC driver in the existing classpath. Follow the instructions to download the driver for SQL server connection correctly:

• Go to the Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server page.
• Extract the archive files
• Insert mssql-jdbc-8.2.0.jreVERSION.jar to the classpath of your project
• Via Maven, declare the below dependencies:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.microsoft.sqlserver</groupId>
    <artifactId>mssql-jdbc</artifactId>
    <version>8.2.1.jre11</version>
</dependency>
#Java Connect to Microsoft SQL Server

Step 2: JDBC URL for Microsoft SQL Server

The syntax for database URL for Java Connect to Microsoft SQL Server is:

#Java Connect to Microsoft SQL Server

jdbc:sqlserver://[serverName[\instanceName][:portNumber]][;property=value[;property=value]]

#Java Connect to Microsoft SQL Server

Where,

• serverName: name of the host or IP address of the device where SQL Server is currently running.
• instanceName: instance name to connect the server.
• portNumber: port number of server, the default value is 1433.
• property=value: you can include one or more connection properties.

Step 3: Register drive and specify connection

• Register the JDBC driver using this statement,

#Java Connect to Microsoft SQL Server

DriverManager.registerDriver(new com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver());

#Java Connect to Microsoft SQL Server

• Call the method getConnection() from the driver manager class.
• Pass the username and password to the method.
• To store the connection properties, use a java.util.Properties object.
• For authentication mode, ensure that the integrated security is true and you have included sqljdbc_auth.dll in the classpath.

Step 4: Executing SQL Commands

• Use the createStatement() method to make a variable st.
• Build a string that includes the SQL command you want to execute. 
• Use the variable with the executeQuery and pass the string as a parameter.

#Java Connect to Microsoft SQL Server

Statement st = conn.createStatement();
String Sql = “select * from [tableName] where <condition>”; 
ResultSet rs = st.executeQuery(Sql);

#Java Connect to Microsoft SQL Server

Limitations of Java Connect to Microsoft SQL Server

In Java Connect to Microsoft SQL Server, you might encounter a version incompatibility issue. For instance, when you use Java 8 to execute your program with Microsoft JDBC drive for Java 11 and higher.

The SQL Server drive for Java 11 cannot be loaded by Java 8. You will either have to download the Java 8 version driver or upgrade your Java software to the 11 version for the proper execution.

What is Java?

Released by Sun Microsystems in 1995, Java is a class-based, object-oriented software language created to have fewer implementation dependencies.

Later, Oracle Corporation acquired Sun Microsystems and took ownership of Java in 2009. Java is extensively used in building mobile applications, desktop GUIs, gaming applications, cloud computing, IoT apps, and more. 

Java has three components, Java Development Kit (JDK), Java Virtual Machine (JVM), and Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

JDK is a software development environment for creating applets and java applications that converts Java code into byte code. Lastly, JRE is a software to run any Java application, and it contains loader class, JVM, and class libraries.

Key Features of Java

Here are some features of Java:

1) Object-Oriented

A computer programming that organizes the software architecture around data or objects instead of functions and logic is known as OOP (object-oriented programming).

In OOP, everything in the program can be defined as an object or unique attributes that explain the object. Java is an object-oriented programming language, meaning every program consists of at least one class and objects, which are instances of that class.

In Java, the object and data are bound together such that you can access the data only via the object, making it very secure to use. Java supports four fundamental concepts of OOPs, inheritance, polymorphism, abstraction, and encapsulation.

These OOPs concepts reduce the efforts required in developing and designing applications.

2) Secured

Java is best known for developing virus-free systems and highly secured applications.

It is secured as it has no explicit pointers, and all the java programs get executed inside a virtual machine environment. The Classloader is a part of the JRE that dynamically loads the Java classes into the Java Virtual Machine.

It adds security by differentiating between the local file systems packages and the imported ones from the network sources. The Bytecode Verifier checks the programs for illegal code, while the security managed determines the safe resources a class can access. 

3) Multi-threaded

Thread is a lightweight process that requires some resources to build and share the process resources. Java is multi-threaded, implying it can execute two or more threads simultaneously to maximize CPU utilization.

As Java uses multiple threads, the memory occupied by each thread is minimum as they share a common memory area.

Due to multi-threading, Java has minimized system resource usage and improved server responsiveness leading to better user communication.

What is Microsoft SQL Server?

Developed in April 1989, Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) that facilitates transaction processes, analytics, business intelligence, and more for various enterprises.

Like other RDBMS technologies, Microsoft SQL Server is built upon SQL, a software language that handles database administration and operations like querying data from the database.

The relational model provided users with referential integrity to maintain data accuracy, consistency, durability, and atomicity. The main component of Microsoft SQL Server is the SQL Server Database Engine that manages data storage, security, and processing.

The SQL Server is based on a database engine as its central component. In addition, the database engine executes database objects like stored procedures, views, and triggers.

It also includes a relational engine that handles queries and a storage engine that manages the tables, pages, data buffers, etc

Key Features of Microsoft SQL Server

Here are some key features of Microsoft SQL Server:

1) Intelligent Query Processing

Microsoft SQL Server has adopted an intelligent query processing that assists in optimizing query execution with lesser compiler time.

Various factors lead to this efficient processing, such as adaptive join that dynamically chooses a joining type based on input rows during execution.

The memory grant feedback effectively handles memory allocation via two execution modes, batch, and row execution modes.

For big data scenarios, the server provides an approximate Count Distinct that returns the value of unique non-null fields in the group to reduce the memory footprint, thereby enhancing the performance efficiency.

2) Machine learning on Linux

Since 2016, Microsoft SQL Server has added embedded R support, and in 2017, it also started supporting Python, letting users take advantage of scaling and performing features like access to the in-memory databases and increasing the speed of OLAP requests.

Users can efficiently execute Python and R scripts with relational databases for predictive analytics and create machine learning workflows to develop meaningful insights.

Microsoft SQL Server even has pre-trained models that can be used for image recognition and positive-negative sentiment analysis to create predictive models.

All the processes developed in Python and R get executed under the Launchpad service identity for full-text indexing and query service.

3) Enhanced Security

Security regarding transactions and data in Microsoft SQL is handled by certificates in a SQL Server Configuration Manager.

The certificate management deals with viewing and validating the installed certificates in the SQL Server instances.

It also manages the certificates near their expiration dates and the deployment of certificates across machines that are a part of the Always On Availability groups and failover cluster instances.

All the data in Microsoft SQL Server is encrypted for security purposes and have certain limitations. For example, users can not perform simple functions like mathematical procedures on encrypted data.

Secure Enclaves was adopted to deal with this issue to allow users to perform simple options like aggregations or LIKE queries on encrypted data.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned about Java, the Microsoft SQL Server database, and how to get started with Java Connect to Microsoft SQL Server with the assistance of the JDBC Microsoft driver.

While Java is a programming language for desktop computing, games, numerical computing, etc., Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system that assists enterprises in performing secure transactions, executing analytics tasks, and storing data.

By connecting Java with Microsoft SQL Server, companies can enhance the protection of their applications’ data as both these technologies provide high-security measures.

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