The Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API has emerged as a key part of the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platforms. It is the primary standards-based mechanism for the Java language to programmatically access relational databases, so when a new version of the specification is released by the Java Community Process, developers are bound to be interested. This article summarizes the key new features as outlined in Sun Microsystems' recently released Proposed Final Draft 3.0 of the JDBC specification.