A JDBC/ODBC bridge provides JDBC API access through one or more ODBC drivers. Some ODBC native code and in many cases native database client code must be loaded on each client machine that uses this type of driver.
The advantage for using this type of driver is that it allows access to almost any database since the database ODBC drivers are readily available.
Disadvantages for using this type of driver include the following:
Performance is degraded since the JDBC call goes through the bridge to the ODBC driver then to the native database connectivity interface. The results are then sent back through the reverse process
Limited Java feature set
May not be suitable for a large-scale application