Re: Unregistering the driver from DriverManager

Relevant new features I'm aware of, are the following ones

 - support SSPI under Windows via Waffle
-  support batching for prepared statements (with limitations)

 - improved support for jdbc 4.0 (not complete though) (currentSchema property in addition to get/setSchema methods)

 - support for 9.3 lob function for LOB > 2Gb

 - support for operators containing '?' (using doubled ??)
 - improved support of fail-over/load-balancing (targetServerType, loadBalanceHosts, hostRecheckSeconds)
 - assumeMinServerVersion property to speed up connection time

 - OSGi support [to be added]

 - dropped support for java 1.4 (I think 9.3 branch was still able to compile on this JDK)

Dave, concerning this last point and for performance reasons, would it be relevant in 9.4 to mass replace StringBuffers with StringBuilders when they're not shared across threads?

Alexis

2015-01-05 12:22 GMT+01:00 Dave Cramer <pg@fastcrypt.com>:

Christopher,

Picking apart the git log is the only way to do this currently. As it appears that OSGI seems to be important I am going to release it with 9.4. Which means I will move the tags etc.

I plan to make the release this week. AFAIK, there are no imminent changes to be implemented.

Dave

Dave Cramer

dave.cramer(at)credativ(dot)ca
http://www.credativ.ca

On 5 January 2015 at 05:00, Christopher BROWN <brown@reflexe.fr> wrote:

Dave,

I could certainly try out the 9.4 driver as-is in an upcoming project (it's not in production yet, it's at the start of the development cycle).  Apart from picking through the Git log, what would be the best resource (up to date, relatively complete) listing changes since 9.3 (to get an idea of things to watch out for or new stuff to try -- for example, there's a "currentSchema" connection property if I understand correctly)?

When do you plan to make the release, and what changes still need to be implemented?

--
Christopher

On 3 January 2015 at 15:47, Dave Cramer <pg@fastcrypt.com> wrote:

Christopher,

I can answer your last question.

Unfortunately the only way to harden the driver is to release it and get bug reports. Typical "feature freeze" cycles etc have not worked in the past. Only when it is available in maven, and download as a released driver will anyone actually use it.

So is it safe to to use? probably mostly. Are there bugs in it? Likely. 

If you have other suggestions I am all ears.

Dave Cramer

dave.cramer(at)credativ(dot)ca
http://www.credativ.ca

On 3 January 2015 at 09:30, Christopher BROWN <brown@reflexe.fr> wrote:

Hi,

I've cloned your pull request locally (haven't forked it, even although I've got a github account and could do so...).

I don't (yet) have time to try it out fully (won't be able to do so until Tuesday at the earliest), but here's some initial observations.

1/ You might want to use a more recent version of "bnd" (you're using 1.5, the current is 2.4)

2/ You refer to Bundle-Activator: org.postgresql.osgi.PGBundleActivator in the manifest, and the source code is there, but it's not included in the resulting OSGi ".jar" (generated in "/jars").

3/ The changes to the Driver class (register(), unregister(), and isRegistered()) look good in source code.

4/ In PGBundleActivator::start, you should perhaps use:

Dictionary<String,Object> properties = new Hashtable<>(4);

// instead of "Properties", to avoid implying that values are strings (this isn't the case here)

5/ In PGBundleActivator::start, shouldn't "Postgresql" be written "PostgreSQL" in the OSGI_JDBC_DRIVER_NAME property?

6/ In PGBundleActivator::stop, you should set the _registration instance to null after unregistering because it's possible to restart a stopped bundle.

7/ As you're using Bundle-ManifestVersion: 2, you might also want to add Require-Capability: osgi.ee;filter:="(&(osgi.ee=JavaSE)(version=1.7))" (where 1.7 is derived from "ant.java.version" during build), as this enforces the JDBC 4.1 "level" indirectly by requiring the appropriate JavaSE version).

The choice of the DataSourceFactory API seems like a good idea to me, as opposed to just registering the "Driver" interface directly.

Is the 9.4 branch stable (as in safe to use as-is, even if not at "feature freeze" yet)?

--
Christopher

On 2 January 2015 at 17:08, Alexis Meneses <alexis.meneses@gmail.com> wrote:

Christopher,

(1) Would you mind testing if PR #241 on Github fits your needs and works in the OSGi environment you're using?

Note that it don't check presence of BundleContext via Class.forName() because this class could be erroneously present in the classpath even without an OSGi Framework being started.

(2) Driver.deregister() method (named after DriverManager method) has been exposed so as to be used in other contexts like Java EE.

Alexis

2014-12-29 14:17 GMT+01:00 Christopher BROWN <brown@reflexe.fr>:

There are two main situations where it would be useful to automatically unregister the driver:

1) OSGi - and the suggestion of using BundleActivator.stop() would be a good fit here (as long as care is taken to ensure resolution=optional for other dependencies)

2) Java EE web applications, using a ServletContextListener, perhaps using annotations as described in https://blogs.oracle.com/swchan/entry/servlet_3_0_annotations (but this would exclude older application servers)

With regards to (2), I generally place JDBC drivers in the main classloader of the application server, as opposed to embedding in WEB-INF/lib when working with webapps.  Also, not all of the webapps I have to deal with (from time to time, it's not my main focus) are up to Servlet 3.0, many as still stuck on 2.5.  And in any case, embedding JDBC drivers in webapps (without matching versions) then accessing them via DriverManager is may cause class lookup problems.

A good solution to (1) above to me would be like this then (building on the suggestion of Alexis):

- keep the static block in driver

- check -- via Class.forName("org.osgi.framework.BundleContext") -- if OSGi classes are visible, implying that the driver has been loaded as a bundle, and skip the DriverManager registration in the static block (unless forced via a system property, just in case something breaks for someone relying on current behavior)

- register the driver in DriverManager in the BundleActivator.start() method

- unregister it (same instance, kept as a reference) in the BundleActivator.stop() method

The only reason I mention (2) is because it might be useful to share some common code.  Or not.  In any case, (1) is the only requirement at this time and (2) isn't as much of a problem.

--

Christopher

On 29 December 2014 at 13:45, Alexis Meneses <alexis.meneses@gmail.com> wrote:

If the only concern is OSGi environments, I think that unregistering could be handled in a BundleActivator.stop() implementation bundled with the driver.

See pending issue #71 on Github.

2014-12-29 12:48 GMT+01:00 Dave Cramer <pg@fastcrypt.com>:

I have no objection to an unregister static method being added. It's not in the API so it would not effect anything really

Dave Cramer

dave.cramer(at)credativ(dot)ca
http://www.credativ.ca

On 29 December 2014 at 04:53, Christopher BROWN <brown@reflexe.fr> wrote:

Hello,

I'm starting to integrate the Postgresql JDBC driver into an OSGi environment, as an OSGi bundle.  I'm evaluating the different ways to avoid a classloader leak with DriverManager when hot-swapping the driver bundle without restarting the host application, and am seeking suggestions on best practice regarding the Postgresql JDBC driver.

Another bundle (which I provide, it's not third-party) will directly depend upon it (loading classes directly, namely org.postgresql.Driver); when the Postgresql JDBC driver classes are loaded, the other bundle will create a DataSource using a JDBC connection pool, and register the DataSource as an OSGi service.  Normally, that's all that will happen during the application lifecycle, but in principle, it's possible for the administrator to want to replace say the 9.3 driver with the 9.4 driver by removing the 9.3 ".jar" at runtime, and replacing it with the 9.4 ".jar", all at runtime; when the first ".jar" is deleted, the dependent bundle is knocked offline, unregistering the DataSource automatically, and notifying all clients; when the second is installed, the application is once again fully-functional (and all this normally occurs within a few hundred milliseconds).

Looking at the source code, I can see that the org.postgresql.Driver class registers itself in a "static" block with DriverManager (which is the correct behavior regarding the JDBC spec).  However, short of a brute-force loop -- like this one: http://stackoverflow.com/a/5315467 (enhanced to check the class name of each driver, to avoid clobbering unrelated driver registrations) -- is there any other approach possible or that could be added, say a NonRegisteringDriver (superclass of Driver, with all logic except for the static initializer) or an "unregister()" static method, or a field containing the registered Driver instance?

Thanks,

Christopher