> _Thank you_ - now, if you want to change to another database it's enough
> to change the java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection and Class.forName?

Yes.  Unfortunatley you have to know the name of driver class and the URL
syntax specific to the JDBC driver.  I usually encapsulate this in some sort
of database lookup class.  I believe this is not an issue if you use EJBs
(Enterprise Java Beans).  In that case I believe you use JNDI (Java Native
Directory Interface) to find databases and the proper driver is
automagically loaded.  Don't quote me though.  Other than that, I am quite
happy with JDBC.  It sure is a lot easier than using equivalent interfaces
in C/C++ and since the database engine is generally the bottleneck, I don't
notice the relative slowness of Java.

Another thing to note is that some (all?) JDBC 2.0 compliant drivers support
connection pooling.  This is generally a huge performance win.  A lot of
time can otherwise be wasted opening and closing physical connections.
Without such support I end up coding my own connection pooling is most
cases, and thus JDBC 2.0 saves me the effort.

> Another thing I'm wondering about is how placeholders work in Java?
> (I'm assuming it has got that)

What do you mean by "placeholders"?

Mike