Instead of specifying attributes on the connection URL, you can specify attributes as properties in a Properties object that you pass as a second argument to the DriverManager.getConnection method.
For example, to set the user name and password:
Class.forName("org.apache.derby.jdbc.EmbeddedDriver"); Properties p = new Properties(); p.put("user", "sa"); p.put("password", "manager"); Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection( "jdbc:derby:mynewDB", p);