如何确定JDBC驱动程序是否为Type 4？

Question

We have an application that runs on Java 1.6 and has the ability to talk to RDBMS systems via custom plugins. We don't care what type of database a customer has, but we did decide to require a Type 4 driver, for a variety of reasons.

I want to programmatically decide whether a driver is Type 4 so that I can reject it right away rather than spend time debugging problems later only to find out that the driver is not Type 4. Since I don't know what the vendor is, I can't just look at the version number. I've looked at Driver.jdbcCompliant() but this is not a necessary condition for the driver being Type 4. I've also looked at creating a Connection and then doing reflection on it to see if it implements certain methods like isValid(), but again I realized this does not necessarily guarantee the driver is Type 4. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Edit: Seems like I was talking about something different anyway!

Get the DatabaseMetaData via Connection.getMetaData() and check that getJDBCMajorVersion() >= 4. You may want to catch NoSuchMethodException when calling that method, since only a JDBC 3.0+ driver will have it.

Edit: Hmm, this seems like it should be right but... Oracle doesn't seem to implement it correctly, since I get 11.2 for the JDBC version. That's the same thing I get for the driver version. Thanks Oracle!

If you can't count on the methods specifically designed for this, it seems to me that your only option is to call methods like createClob() on Connection and catch NoSuchMethodException . That or add special handling for specific vendors.