Thread: Java password encryption

Hi,
So i have made an application which connects/logs into the root of the mysql server then loads the different databases/tables etc. But as it works, the user puts the username/password into the textfield, then it takes the user/pass and sends to the server to login.

             Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
             String url = addressTextField.getText();//"jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mysql";
             String userName = connInstance.getLoginDetails(loginTextField);
             String passWord = connInstance.getLoginDetails(passWordTextField);
             con = DriverManager.getConnection(url,userName, passWord);
             stmt = con.createStatement();

The getLoginDetails() method just grabs the input from the textfields. Now it all works fine, though i am wondering about what encryption should be used for the password and how i would go about it?
I could have a database with all usernames/MD5 digests, then when the user tries to log in, it creates an MD5 digest of the password and compares to the one in the database to see if its the correct password, though i am unsure as to how i would then login to the server as even though it has been confirmed that its the right password, the password itself still has to be sent to login. Im kind of new to this and not sure how i go about secure logins. Any help would be appreciated,
thanks.

It sounds like you want each user to have a specified username/password for the database? You might consider a model which requires just a few username/password pairs for database access, each of which defines different select/update/delete access to the database tables. So rather than having a username/password defined for database login for each user, you define access right groups, which users are members of. From there, you could have a table which contains the username, MD5 password, and access right...which can be queried for each user to determine the access rights and login to the database with the username/password corresponding to those rights.