Derby JDBC driver consists of both the database engine and an embedded JDBC driver. Applications use JDBC to interact with a database. Applications running on JDK 1.5 or earlier, must load the driver in order to work with the database. JDBC driverdescription

In an embedded environment, loading the driver also starts .

In a Java application, you typically load the driver with the static Class.forName method or with the jdbc.drivers system property. For example:

Class.forName("org.apache.derby.jdbc.EmbeddedDriver");

For detailed information about loading the JDBC driver, see "java.sql.Driver interface" in the .

If your application runs on JDK 1.6 or higher, then you do not need to explicitly load the EmbeddedDriver. In that environment, the driver loads automatically.