JDBC is the low level connection standard. Everything I am aware of is built ontop of JDBC. Many people use the JPA libraries like Hibernate and EclipseLink. A

JDBC is the low level connection standard. Everything I am aware of is built ontop of JDBC. Many people use the JPA libraries like Hibernate and EclipseLink. Another popular ORM is (my|i)batis. JDBI also seems to have a decent following. After years of using ORMs, I vastly prefer interfaces like HugSQL unless I'm building a dead simple CRUD app. (I'm never building simple CRUD apps.)