Java is a complete, portable, object-oriented, safe, flexible, and versatile lan-guage, but why consider it when it comes to database programming? Well,
this is the whole purpose of Part 1 of this book, but let’s say in a nutshell that
the integration of a Java engine (J2SE) with a database engine, closer to the
data, gives you the best of both worlds and opens the door to powerful, ver-satile/flexible, and sophisticated data-driven applications that are not possi-ble with non-Java-enabled RDBMS. The greatest benefit Java brings to the
database is the ability to implement data-driven functionalities or services,
by just reusing the huge set of Java libraries, with minor changes, directly in
the database, resulting in an extraordinary productivity and cost savings.
These libraries solve concrete problems such as custom enterprise integra-tion, advanced image processing, Excel-like expressions to SQL transform-ers, and a set of outbound capabilities including JDBC callout to remote
databases, HTTP callout to Web components (i.e., Servlet and JSP), callout
to RMI servers, RMI/IIOP callout to EJB and CORBA objects, and SOAP/
HTTP callout to external Web services. Several RDBMS support Java for
writing stored procedures; however, the level of integration of Java with the
RDBMS engine varies from one vendor to another