Thread: PostgreSQL JDBC vs jxDBCon as a model for other language implementations

Hi.

I'm building an API for database access for a non-Java language.
I'm modeling the API very closely on JDBC.

I want to make it as easy as possible for other developers to implement
drivers for different database systems.

I came across the jxDBCon project (http://jxdbcon.sourceforge.net/)
which seems to be a good model:

    "jxDBCon a framework to ease the development JDBC drivers. By using it
    you can concentrate on the tasks specific to your DBMS and benefit from
    the generic solutions provided by jxDBCon. jxDBCon also contains a
    featureful driver implementation for PostgreSQL"

They also say:

    "Actually the framework was created for the PostgreSQL driver, as I
    was disappointed with the compatibility of the existing driver which
    ships with the database distribution"

The last commit to jxDBCon was almost 5 years ago, whereas the
PostgreSQL JDBC seems well maintained.

The PostgreSQL JDBC drivers seems to have a good Abstract* class
hierarchy, which is what I'm looking for. There does seem to be
some PostgreSQL-specific logic in those abstract classes though,
like appendArray in AbstractJdbc4Connection.

I'm wondering how the jxDBCon and PostgreSQL JDBC drivers compare.
I'd appreciate it if someone could give me some background information
about their history and the relationship between the two drivers.

Is the PostgreSQL JDBC driver class hierarchy, and implementations of the
abstract classes, a good foundation to build a framework to ease the
development JDBC drivers for multiple databases?

Tim.

Στις Thursday 22 July 2010 11:54:02 ο/η Tim Bunce έγραψε:

>
> They also say:
>
>     "Actually the framework was created for the PostgreSQL driver, as I
>     was disappointed with the compatibility of the existing driver which
>     ships with the database distribution"

Then he should rather contribute to the official jdbc driver, than create another
zombie open source project.


--
Achilleas Mantzios

On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, Tim Bunce wrote:

> The PostgreSQL JDBC drivers seems to have a good Abstract* class
> hierarchy, which is what I'm looking for. There does seem to be
> some PostgreSQL-specific logic in those abstract classes though,
> like appendArray in AbstractJdbc4Connection.

The AbstractJdbc classes are not designed with the intention of being
usable by other database driver implementations and are very postgresql
specific.  They are instead designed to be able to share code across the
various JDBC driver versions that can be compiled.  When you build the
driver you get a version that matches the JDBC spec of your JDK.  So over
the course of history we've offered JDBC 1 -> JDBC 4 spec drivers and
that's what the AbstractJdbc classes facilitate.

Kris Jurka

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 02:08:33PM -0400, Kris Jurka wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, Tim Bunce wrote:
>
> >The PostgreSQL JDBC drivers seems to have a good Abstract* class
> >hierarchy, which is what I'm looking for. There does seem to be
> >some PostgreSQL-specific logic in those abstract classes though,
> >like appendArray in AbstractJdbc4Connection.
>
> The AbstractJdbc classes are not designed with the intention of
> being usable by other database driver implementations and are very
> postgresql specific.  They are instead designed to be able to share
> code across the various JDBC driver versions that can be compiled.
> When you build the driver you get a version that matches the JDBC
> spec of your JDK.  So over the course of history we've offered JDBC
> 1 -> JDBC 4 spec drivers and that's what the AbstractJdbc classes
> facilitate.

Thanks for that helpful background Kris.

Given that design it seems that jxDBCon might be a better model
for my needs.  I'm trying to contact the authors to get some information
on the history and status of the project. (It seems to have been
abandoned some years ago.)

Meanwhile, I'd be delighted if anyone could suggest any other JDBC
driver development framework I could learn from. Or, else any other
open source JDBC driver with a good internal architecture.

Thanks!

Tim.