Re: JDBC on Postgres 8.3

Allgood, John wrote:

> We have a programmer who is wanting to access our PostgreSQL 8.3
> database using JDBC connectivity thorough some Oracle Query tool. I
> have read from the JDBC site in regards to installing this and have
> some questions. I will be installing the JDBC driver on RHEL4 what
> version of the driver should I use? The programmer said JDBC3 or 4
> would work fine.

You need a JDBC driver for 8.3 specifically. They're not forward
compatible, so a JDBC driver for 8.2 may not work correctly with 8.3. As
you're happy with JDBC3 or JDBC4 you might as well grab the 8.3 JDBC4
driver:

http://jdbc.postgresql.org/download.html

http://jdbc.postgresql.org/download/postgresql-8.3-603.jdbc4.jar

> Also what java do I install?

Unless you have a reason to choose some other JVM or version then
installing the Sun J2SE JDK 6 Update 6 for Linux would probably be a
good idea.

http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

Get the RPM packaged version if you're working on Red Hat, as it's a bit
nicer to install.

It's also possible that Red Hat provide a packaged JVM for RHEL, so you
might want to check for that first. I have no experience with RHEL to
use as a base for specific advice, as I pretty much stick to Fedora and
Ubuntu.

> One more questions and
> I will be quiet. What environment variables need to be set for Java?

Generally none at all unless your applications require specific
environment settings. You might need to specify the path to the
PostgreSQL JDBC JAR in the CLASSPATH environment variable if your
application is incapable of locating and loading the jar its self when
given a path.

It may also be necessary to add the bin/ and jre/bin directories of the
installed Java environment to your PATH if the software you're using
cannot automatically locate the installed JRE.

Specific applications may have other environment requirements, but as
far as I know (and I use it quite a bit now) the PostgreSQL JDBC driver
does not.

I get the impression that you're used to working with software and tools
that aren't anywhere near so generally sensible as the PostgreSQL
database and JDBC driver. Specific JRE versions? Magic environment
variables? Ugh, it sounds like a Progress 4GL installation....

--
Craig Ringer