JDBC Thin Driver

The Oracle JDBC Thin driver is a 100% pure Java, Type IV driver. It is targeted for Oracle JDBC applets but can be used for applications as well. Because it is written entirely in Java, this driver is platform-independent. It does not require any additional Oracle software on the client side. The Thin driver communicates with the server using TTC, a protocol developed by Oracle to access the Oracle Relational Database Management System (RDBMS).
For applets it can be downloaded into a browser along with the Java applet being run. The HTTP protocol is stateless, but the Thin driver is not. The initial HTTP request to download the applet and the Thin driver is stateless. Once the Thin driver establishes the database connection, the communication between the browser and the database is stateful and in a two-tier configuration.
The JDBC Thin driver allows a direct connection to the database by providing an implementation of TCP/IP that emulates Oracle Net and TTC (the wire protocol used by OCI) on top of Java sockets. Both of these protocols are lightweight implementation versions of their counterparts on the server. The Oracle Net protocol runs over TCP/IP only.
The driver supports only TCP/IP protocol and requires a TNS listener on the TCP/IP sockets from the database server.