driver can be downloaded from informix's web site. you have to run setup when you download it. file ifxjdbc.jar is your driver which needs to be in the classpath of the component which is to use it (JSP in your case). you would load the driver into the JVM, get an instance of the DriverManager and call getConnection() on it to connect to the database. while getting an instance of the driver manager you will need to give the location of your database and user credentials.