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JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver Alternatives

Java has included a JDBC/ODBC Bridge driver as a transitional solution for accessing ODBC data sources, but it has always been considered a very limited driver and the recommendation has always been to use a pure JDBC driver instead. Starting with Java 8, the bridge driver is no longer provided.

For most databases, you can find JDBC drivers from the database vendor or a third party. Try searching the net for the name of your database plus "JDBC driver".

If you cannot find a JDBC driver for a database that can be accessed via ODBC, you find a few alternatives below. Note that we have have no relationship with any of the organizations behind these drivers and have not thoroughly tested any of the drivers with DbVisualizer. In other words, please make sure that the driver works for you before committing to one.

For any technical assistance setting up or using these drivers, please contact respective author.

The UCanAccess Driver for MS Access

This is an Open Source driver specifically for Microsoft Access databases, not for ODBC data sources in general. You can download it here:

https://ucanaccess.sourceforge.net/site.html

To use it, you need to download the following JAR files:

UCanAccess-4.0.4-bin.zip (unzip to find JAR file; ucanaccess-4.0.4.jar) from https://sourceforge.net/projects/ucanaccess/files/

jackcess-2.1.11.jar from https://sourceforge.net/projects/jackcess/files/

commons-lang-2.6-bin.zip (unzip to find JAR file) from https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/download_lang.cgi

commons-logging-1.1.3-bin.zip (unzip to find JAR file) from https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-logging/download_logging.cgi

hsqldb-2.3.1.zip (unzip to find JAR files hsqldb.jar and sqltool.jar) from https://sourceforge.net/projects/hsqldb/files/

apache-log4j-2.1-bin.zip (unzip to find JAR file; you only need log4j-1.2-api-2.1.jar) from https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/download.html

poi-3.11-20141221.zip (unzip to find JAR file) from https://poi.apache.org/download.html

Then start DbVisualizer and open Tools->Driver Manager and

  1. Create a new Driver and name it UCanAccess,
  2. Load all the JAR files in the User Specified tab in the order listed above,
  3. Close the Driver Manager,
  4. Open the Object View tab for your MS Access connection and set the Driver to UCanAccess,
  5. Enter the JDBC URL in this format: jdbc:ucanaccess://<absolute_path_to_the_ms_access_file>
  6. Open the Properties tab for the connection and select the Delimited Identifiers category,
  7. Change the Begin Identifier to [ and the End Identifier to ] and click Apply,
  8. Switch back to the Connection tab and click Connect.

Easysoft JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver

This is a commercial JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver, available here:

https://www.easysoft.com/products/data_access/jdbc_odbc_bridge/

The "Working with ODBC data in DbVisualizer" page at the Easysoft web site explains how to use it with DbVisualizer.

CData JDBC-ODBC Bridge

This is a commercial JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver, available here:

https://www.cdata.com/drivers/bridge/jdbc/

The "Using JDBC / DbVisualizer" page at the CData web site explains how to use it with DbVisualizer.