JDBC Direct Connections to MS Access

Question

My company utilizes an Intranet web Java client to post data into multiple Microsoft Access databases. For the longest we have used dbAnywhere as middleware to connect the applet and the database. dbAnywhere is no longer supported and this process seems to slow down the applet significantly as we wait for the data to be loaded into tables inside the applet. My question is two fold:
1) Is there a type-4 JDBC connector available to connect directly to MS Access databases and if so would it be difficult to implement or migrate to? This is important because dbAnywhere does not appear to be supported on Windows 2000, which is the platform we are migrating to. We need to eliminate dbAnywhere if possible.
2) What can be done to speed up the table loads in our applet? Are there some code optimizations that can be taken advantage of?
Any responses or help is greatly appreciated. I cannot post code due it's confidentiality.
-sam

Answer 1

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1) Is there a type-4 JDBC connector available to
connect directly to MS Access databases and if so
would it be difficult to implement or migrate to?
This is important because dbAnywhere does not appear
to be supported on Windows 2000, which is the
platform we are migrating to. We need to eliminate
dbAnywhere if possible.
By definition no such driver can exist. A type 4 driver is java only and connects directly to the database. Excluding file writes the only connection method is via sockets and there is nothing for a socket to connect to in a MS Access database - MS Access doesn't work that way.
You can look into type 3 driver. I believe there are a number of them. They use an intermediate server. Search here http://industry.java.sun.com/products/jdbc/drivers
You could implement your own using RmiJdbc at http://www.objectweb.org/. However I personally would think that that would require a serious long look at security issues before exposing a solution to the internet.