In the context of JDBC, I'm pretty sure that 'the table' means a database table.
I'd suggest starting off with a JDBC tutorial. If you already have experience accessing a database using some other language, then you shouldn't have problems learning JDBC. Learning it without previous database experiences will probably take quite some time, though.
Yikes! I have no prior database experience and only a few days to complete the assignment!
But then again as far as databases are concerned, the assessment only requires me to read the data(text) file and populate a table.
And then finally, fetch some specific data from that table.....
Off the top of my head, my first step:
#1 Use a BufferedReader to grab the data file, then parse it and load the data into an Arraylist.
I think I'm ok with this, but I will post the solution on this thread to quality assure it!
After that, it's scanning the tutorials to learn how to 'populate a table', and how to 'fetch specific data from that table'.
I'll cross those bridges when I come to them, but for now on with step one!