On Thu, 13 Jul 2006, Tom Lane wrote:
> The people who think PL/Java is an essential checklist item undoubtedly
> also think JDBC is an essential checklist item, but I'm not seeing any
> groundswell of support for putting JDBC back into core. Instead we
> expect packagers (like the RPM set) to make JDBC available alongside the
> core postgres packages. That's how PL/Java ought to be handled, too,
> IMHO.
The fact that the JDBC driver requires no compilation for anyone on any
platform is one reason for that. Anyone can visit the website and be
working within minutes with no understanding of the build environment or
installation. You drop the provided JAR file in your classpath and you
are done. The same cannot be said for pl/java. Yes, it would be good if
there were packages for it, but it's very unlikely that pl/java will be
able to maintain up to date binary packages for every platform.
Another benefit the JDBC project enjoys is a website (jdbc.postgresql.org)
and mailing list (pgsql-jdbc@postgresql.org) that are sponsored directly
by the project instead of off on a more obscure site (gborg/pgfoundry).
Having the archives with the core projects certainly makes them easier to
find.
Kris Jurka