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Ignite clients come in several different flavors, each with various capabilities.
link:SQL/JDBC/jdbc-driver[JDBC] and link:SQL/ODBC/odbc-driver[ODBC] drivers
are useful for SQL-only applications and SQL-based tools. Thick and thin clients go beyond SQL capabilities and
support many more APIs. Finally, ORM frameworks like Spring Data or Hibernate are also integrated with Ignite and
can be used as an access point to your cluster.

Let's review the difference between thick and thin clients by comparing their capabilities.

*Thick* clients (client nodes) join the cluster via an internal protocol, receive all of the cluster-wide
updates such as topology changes, are aware of data distribution, and can direct a query/operation to a server node
that owns a required data set. Plus, thick clients support all of the Ignite APIs.

*Thin* clients (aka. lightweight clients) connect to the cluster via binary protocol with a well-defined
message format. This type of client supports a limited set of APIs (presently, key-value and SQL operations only) but
in return:

- Makes it easy to enable programming language support for Ignite. Java, .NET, C++, Python, Node.JS, and
  PHP are supported out of the box.

- Doesn't have any dependencies on JVM. For instance, .NET and C++ _thick_ clients have a richer feature set but
  start and use JVM internally.

- Requires at least one port opened on the cluster end. Note that more ports need to be opened if
  partition-awareness is used for a thin client.

TIP: The ODBC driver uses a protocol similar to the thin client's. As for the JDBC driver, it comes in two flavors -
a thick version of the driver that utilizes a Java thick client internally and a thin counterpart, based on the thin
client's protocol.