Accessing the H2 Console

By default, the console view of the H2 database is disabled. Before accessing the H2 database, we must enable it by using the following property:

spring.h2.console.enabled=true

Once we have enabled the H2 console, now we can access the H2 console in the browser by invoking the URL http://localhost:8082/h2-console. 

Note: Provide your port number in which your spring application is running

The following figure shows the console view of the H2 database.

H2 Database in Spring Boot is an embedded, open-source, and in-memory database. It is a relational database management system written in Java. It is a client/server application. It stores data in memory, not persist the data on disk. Here we will be discussing how can we configure and perform some basic operations in Spring Boot using H2 Database.

In this article, we will explore the benefits and usage of H2 database in Spring Boot applications. Key features such as ease of setup, configuration, and running SQL queries will be covered.

What is H2 Database?

H2 is a lightweight and fast SQL database written in Java. It can run in two modes: in-memory and embedded. The in-memory mode is particularly useful for testing and development because it allows you to create a temporary database that is automatically destroyed when the application stops. The embedded mode is used for applications that need a small, self-contained database.

Features of the H2 Database:

• Very fast, open-source, JDBC API
• Embedded and server modes; disk-based or in-memory databases.
• Transaction support, multi-version concurrency
• Browser-based Console application
• Encrypted databases
• Fulltext search
• Pure Java with a small footprint: around 2.5 MB jar file size
• ODBC driver