Java, JDBC & CORBA

As some of you may, or may not know, the Java JDK 1.2 is due to be
released shortly.

On the CORBA side of things, Java 1.2 provides a CORBA 2.0 orb.

Now I know from the recent postings were concentrating on the CORBA 2.2
api (which I agree with). However, after spending the last few evenings
reading up on CORBA (and someone correct me if I've got the wrong end of
the stick here), if you have two orbs communicating via IIOP, then in most
cases, IIOP would mask out most of the differences between the 2.0 & 2.2
api's?

Anyhow, on to JDBC. We have a problem. Our current JDBC driver (as
reported by Giuliano Carlini <GCARLINI(at)us(dot)oracle(dot)com>) will not work under
Java 1.2. This is because the java.sql package has been improved, and the
1.2 JVM is now more strict on the classes when it loads.

We could add the missing methods into the existing classes, except that
there are 12 new classes in the java.sql package, and then the driver will
not work (nor compile) with the existing 1.1 JVM.

Now I see two ways round this:

1: We create a new driver, covering the 1.2 additions. I hate this idea,
as it means two separate sets of sources, and I'd expect a lot of confused
users who'll ask "Why two JDBC drivers?"

2: We keep the existing files, and create a new sub-package that includes
the classes that have been changed or added. We can then get the Makefile
to test the JDK version, and then compile the correct set of classes.

Ok, I know there will be two sets of sources for some classes, but this is
the only way I can see to keep backward compatibility with 1.1.x (remember
there are still people using 1.0.2 some 2 years after 1.1 came out -
because the browsers are only just catching up).

One good thing from all this, the java.sql.Driver class has not been
changed, so all existing code will not break when they load our driver.

Anyhow, what method does everyone prefer?

I had to ask this, as it's a major change, and there's a lot of work
that's going to be involved in getting back up to spec.

Peter

--
Peter T Mount peter(at)retep(dot)org(dot)uk
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