Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) is an application programming interface (API) for the programming language Java, which defines how a client may access a database. It is Java based data access technology and used for Java database connectivity. It is part of the Java Standard Edition platform, from Oracle Corporation. It provides methods to query and update data in a database, and is oriented towards relational databases. The application program interface lets you encode access request statements in Structured Query Language (SQL) that are then passed to the program that manages the database. It returns the results through a similar interface. JDBC is very similar to the SQL Access Group's Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) and, with a small "bridge" program. Unicode Systems uses the JDBC interface to access databases through the ODBC interface.