Why Do We Need JDBC?

Why can't application developers use ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) on the Java platform? After all, it's an established standard API for data access.

You can use ODBC; however, ODBC isn't appropriate for direct use from the Java programming language because it uses a C interface. The JDBC API was modeled after ODBC, but, because JDBC is a Java API, it offers a natural Java interface for working with SQL. JDBC is needed to provide a "pure Java" solution for application development.