MySQL Connector/J 5.1 Developer Guide
Two versions of MySQL Connector/J are available:
Connector/J 5.1 is a Type 4 pure Java JDBC driver, which
conforms to the JDBC 3.0, 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2 specifications. It
provides compatibility with all the functionality of MySQL,
including 5.6, 5.7 and 8.0. Connector/J 5.1 provides ease of
development features, including auto-registration with the
Driver Manager, standardized validity checks, categorized
SQLExceptions, support for large update counts, support for
local and offset date-time variants from the
java.time package, support for JDBC-4.x XML
processing, support for per connection client information, and
support for the NCHAR,
NVARCHAR and
NCLOB data types.
Connector/J 8.0 is a Type 4 pure Java JDBC 4.2 driver for the Java 8 platform. It provides compatibility with all the functionality of MySQL 5.6, 5.7, and 8.0. See MySQL Connector/J 8.0 Developer Guide for details.
MySQL Connector/J 8.0 is highly recommended for use with MySQL Server 8.0, 5.7, and 5.6. Please upgrade to MySQL Connector/J 8.0.
The following table summarizes the Connector/J versions available, along with the compatibility information for different versions of JDBC, MySQL Server, and Java, as well as the support status for each of the Connector/J versions:
Table 2.1 Summary of Connector/J Versions
| Connector/J version | JDBC version | MySQL Server version | JRE Required | JDK Required for Compilation | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.1 | 3.0, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 | 5.61, 5.71, 8.01 | JRE 5 or higher1 | JDK 5.0 AND JDK 8.0 or higher2, 3 | General availability |
| 8.0 | 4.2 | 5.6, 5.7, 8.0 | JRE 8 or higher | JDK 8.0 or higher2 | General availability. Recommended version. |
1 JRE 8 or higher is required for Connector/J 5.1 to connect to MySQL 5.6, 5.7, and 8.0 with SSL/TLS when using some cipher suites.
2 A customized JSSE provider might be required to use some later TLS versions and cipher suites when connecting to MySQL servers. For example, because Oracle's Java 8 is shipped with a JSSE implementation that only supports TLSv1.2 and lower, you need a customized JSSE implementation to use TLSv1.3 on Oracle's Java 8 platform.
3 If you are building Connector/J 5.1 from source code using the source distribution, you must have both JDK 8.0 or higher AND JDK 5.0 installed. It is also good to have JRE 6 for compiling Connector/J 5.1. See Section 3.4, “Installing from Source” for details.
This guide also covers earlier versions of Connector/J, with specific notes given where a setting applies to a specific version.