As the first product and the predecessor of ShardingSphere, Sharding-JDBC defines itself as a lightweight Java framework that provides extra service at Java JDBC layer. With the client end connecting directly to the database, it provides service in the form of jar and requires no extra deployment and dependence. It can be considered as an enhanced JDBC driver, which is fully compatible with JDBC and all kinds of ORM frameworks.

| Sharding-JDBC | Sharding-Proxy | Sharding-Sidecar | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Database | Any |
MySQL/PostgreSQL | MySQL/PostgreSQL |
| Connections Count Cost | More |
Less | More |
| Supported Languages | Java Only |
Any | Any |
| Performance | Low loss |
Relatively High loss | Low loss |
| Decentralization | Yes |
No | No |
| Static Entry | No |
Yes | No |
Sharding-JDBC is suitable for java application.

The yellow part in the diagram indicates the API entrance of Sharding-JDBC, provided in factory method. There are two kinds of factories, ShardingDataSourceFactory and MasterSlaveDataSourceFactory for now. ShardingDataSourceFactory is used to create JDBC drivers of sharding databases with sharding tables or sharding databases with sharding tables+read-write split; MasterSlaveDataSourceFactory is used to create JDBC drivers of read-write split.
The blue part in the diagram indicates configuration objects of Sharding-JDBC, which provides flexible configuration methods. ShardingRuleConfiguration is the core and entrance of sharding database and sharding table configuration, which can include many TableRuleConfiguration and MasterSlaveRuleConfiguration. Each group of sharding tables with same rules is set with a TableRuleConfiguration. If sharding databases with sharding tables and read-write split are used together, each logic database of read-write split is set with a MasterSlaveRuleConfiguration. Each TableRuleConfiguration is corresponding to a ShardingStrategyConfiguration and it has 5 types to choose.
Read-write split uses MasterSlaveRuleConfiguration.
The red part in the diagram indicates internal objects, which are used in Sharding-JDBC and needless to be focused by application developers. Sharding-JDBC uses ShardingRuleConfiguration and MasterSlaveRuleConfiguration to generate rule objects used by ShardingDataSource and MasterSlaveDataSource. Implemented with DataSource interface, ShardingDataSource and MasterSlaveDataSource are complete implementation schemes of JDBC.
Configuration objects.Configuration objects to Rule objects through Factory objects.Rule objects and DataSource objects through Factory objects.DataSource objects to split databases.Classes in org.apache.shardingsphere.api and org.apache.shardingsphere.shardingjdbc.api packages are API open to users, the modifications of which will be declared in release notes. As internal implementations, classes in other packages can adjust any time, please not use them directly.