Chapter 1

Welcome to chapter one. You are probably here because you want to work or are already working with databases. Databases are often crucial when it comes to storing data. We have many databases out there. All of them satisfy different use cases and are specialised on different tasks and data sets. Some store data in documents, some in tables or something else.

Maybe you have already chosen a database and started programming. Maybe you are encountering errors like timed out connections, low tick speed on your minecraft server or a strange increased memory consumption. Or maybe you are lucky and found this text before you start blindly. If you are the second one I congratulate you! You have probably saved a lot of time. If you are the first type, don't worry we will get this sorted out, but it will be some work.

First we have to choose our database. After this the real fun begins. How do we read or write data? How do we create a good table layout? How do we connect to our database in our application or how can we take a look at our data?

We will answer all these questions on the next pages. Keep it up and read everything carefully. You will probably get problems if you skip some part. Since we cant cover all existing databases we will focus on the more popular databases MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL and SQLite on this page. It is fine if you don't know them yet. They will become your best friends soon.

We will start with connection and setting up our database with some desktop clients. After this we dive into java and take a look at the different ways of connection to our databases.