However 11.0.1 mathematica comes with a support for using open source JDBC driver which can be used to connect Microsoft Access DB without relying on JDBC-to-ODBC bridge.
And for other there was no other free choice - and some of the license arrangements were impossible since they were per sku rather than via product. Yes you are right, JDBC-to-ODBC support is gone as Mathematica uses java8. And for a long time for a number of data stores it was the only choice.
It worked well and for many applications and was updated for a while and was maintained as least to point of verifying that it still worked with all versions of java. One might suppose that if that driver was not in fact good enough that it would have certainly have cast aspersions on the quality of the commercial driver. It had nothing to do with the actual quality of the driver. It doesn't take a lot of reasoning to decide that the the original documentation of the bridge driver was to meet the business goals of the commercial company that developed the driver while still allowing Sun to deliver a free driver that did in fact work. And they still sell a bridge driver (still referred to as Merant as well which is kind of odd.) Entpacken Sie es (wenn Sie WinRAR oder 7zip installiert haben) oder benennen Sie es in rt.zip um und entpacken Sie es. Gehen Sie zum JRElib-Ordner und suchen Sie die rt.jar. Through various corporate acquisitions the company today that holds that legacy is DataDirect. Wir können JDBC-ODBC Bridge auch in Java 8 verwenden, folgen Sie einfach diesem einfachen Rezept: Laden Sie ein JDK 7 oder JRE 7 herunter. That company was also significantly involved in creating the first JDBC 1.0 spec (such as it was.) The goal at the time and one which basically continues today is to sell jdbc drivers. The original jdbc odbc bridge driver was more or perhaps entirely created by a commercial company - Merant. However most if not all of that was marketing nonsense. The Easysoft JDBC-ODBC Bridge simply allows applications written in Java to use the JDBC API with existing ODBC Drivers. I agree with what is said here - it never really was a solution to begin with.