Derby consists of both the database engine and an embedded JDBC driver. Applications use JDBC to interact with a database. Applications must load the driver in order to work with the database.
In an embedded environment, loading the driver also starts Derby.
In a Java application, you typically load the driver with the static Class.forName method or with the jdbc.drivers system property. For example:
Class.forName("org.apache.derby.jdbc.EmbeddedDriver");
For detailed information about loading the Derby JDBC driver, see "java.sql.Driver" in the Derby Reference Manual. See also javadoc for org.apache.derby.util.DriverUtil.