Selection of jdbc driver for oracle 8i

Which jdbc dri开发者_运维百科ver should be used for connecting with oracle 8i? I am using jdk 1.6 and tomcat.

The choices would be (in the decreasing order of preference):

• The JDBC driver that is provided with the database itself. This is typically found in the jdbc/lib directory of your Oracle database home.
• The most recent driver for the 8i platform. You can get this from Oracle Technology Network. Use this if are encountering any issues (that are typically not patched in the driver supplied by the database).
• The JDBC driver that ships with the application server. This is listed as the last preference, for the 8i platform is quite old, and the drivers supplied would have better characteristics for newer releases like the 10g and 11g platforms.

If you are on Java 1.4 or newer, i.e. Java 1.4/5/6, then use the driver within ojdbc_14.jar instead of classes12.zip. The driver within classes12.zip is meant to be used on versions of Java after 1.2 and before 1.4.

If you do have ojdbc5.jar or ojdbc6.jar (unlikely to be the case for the 8i drivers), then they'll need to used in preference over ojdbc14.jar, in the Java 5 and Java 6 platforms respectively. Use these drivers (meant for the Java 5 and Java 6 platforms) with caution though, as the some of these driver versions will simply not be supported when used against an 8i database. For example, the Oracle® Database JDBC Developer's Guide and Reference for 11g R1 states the following:

Backward Compatibility

The JDBC drivers are certified to work with the currently supported versions of Oracle Database. For example, the JDBC Thin drivers in Oracle Database 11g Release 1 (11.1) are certified to work with the 10.2.x, 10.1.x, 9.2.x, and 9.0.1.x Oracle Database releases. However, they are not certified to work with older, unsupported database releases, such as 8.0.x and 7.x.

The JDBC developer's guide for 10g R1/R2 might state the same, but you'll need to verify this if you intend to proceed with a driver version that works against a newer database release. In practice, ensure that you know the version of the driver in use, and that it is supported for use against 8i.