With JDBC 4, you will no longer need to use Class.forName (...) see here for one article explaining this:
, JDBC. JDBC Class.forName(), , JDBC. DriverManager JDBC . , DriverManager registerDriver() . , jdbc.drivers. DriverManager , , .
JDBC 4 J2SE Service Provider, . JAR META-INF/services/java.sql.driver. JDBC . getConnection() DriverManager , , . , registerDriver(), .
Sun JDBC JDBC. JDBC 4.0 ...