Re: Oracle JDBC metadata screwups

Mike Schuler wrote:

> Why are there so many problems with Oracle JDBC drivers - ever since
> they came out? I can't differentiate between SYSTEM TABLES and TABLES,
> the ResultSetMetaData doesn't have values for decimal places or sizes,
> etc...
> I'm using Oracle 9i, with the newest ojdbc14.jar and I can't believe
> we're the only ones with these problems.

It's not the driver's fault. The driver has to depend on what the DBMS sends, especially for result set metadata etc. It would take a (probably not backward-compatible) change to the DBMS protocol for it to start returning more/better metadata. As an example, the metadata is insuffient, for most numerical data, for the driver to adhere to the JDBC spec for what object to make for getObject(). That's why the driver punts on this issue, and just returns a BigDecimal for all numeric data. Joe Weinstein at BEA Received on Mon Dec 15 2003 - 12:30:49 CST