JDBC providers allow applications to interact with relational databases.
Applications use JDBC providers to interact with relational databases. The JDBC provider supplies the specific JDBC driver implementation class for access to a specific type of database. To create a pool of connections to that database, you associate a data source with the JDBC provider. Together, the JDBC provider and the data source objects are functionally equivalent to the J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA) connection factory, which provides connectivity with a non-relational database.
Refer to the examples of both Typical stand-alone environment setup and Typical deployment environment setup in the previous topic.
For more information on JDBC providers, see "JDBC providers" in the WebSphere® Application Server information center.