The document discusses object-relational impedance mismatch and various data source patterns for mapping objects to relational databases in a way that minimizes this mismatch. It describes the table data gateway, row data gateway, active record, and data mapper patterns. The table data gateway acts as a gateway to a database table, while the row data gateway acts as a gateway to a single record. Active record wraps a database row and adds domain logic, and data mapper provides object-relational mapping to keep the object model independent from the database schema. Spring JDBC is also introduced as a framework that can help implement these patterns.