Details
Description
The hotspot VM offers a way to avoid having to specify the driver class explicitly when using the JDBC driver.
The DriverManager methods getConnection and getDrivers have been enhanced to support the Java Standard Edition Service Provider mechanism. JDBC 4.0 Drivers must include the file META-INF/services/java.sql.Driver. This file contains the name of the JDBC drivers implementation of java.sql.Driver. For example, to load the my.sql.Driver class, the META-INF/services/java.sql.Driver file would contain the entry: `my.sql.Driver`
Applications no longer need to explicitly load JDBC drivers using Class.forName(). Existing programs which currently load JDBC drivers using Class.forName() will continue to work without modification.
via http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/sql/DriverManager.html