15.1 Third-Party JDBC Driver Interoperability

The Identity Manager Driver for JDBC is designed to interoperate with a specific set of third-party JDBC drivers, instead of a specific set of databases. In fact, the third-party JDBC driver, not the database, is the primary determinant of whether the Driver for JDBC works against any given database. As a general rule, if the Driver for JDBC interoperates well with a given third-party JDBC driver, it interoperates well with databases and database versions that the third-party driver supports.

We strongly recommend that you use the third-party JDBC drivers supplied by major enterprise database vendors whenever possible, such as those listed in Section 15.4, Supported Third-Party JDBC Drivers. They are usually free, mature, and known to interoperate well with the Driver for JDBC and the databases they target. You can use other third-party drivers, but NovellĀ® does not support them.

In general, most third-party drivers are backward compatible. However, even if they are generally backward compatible, they are generally not forward compatible. Anytime a database server is upgraded, the third-party driver used with this product should probably be updated as well.

Also, as a general rule, we recommend that you use the latest version of a third-party driver, unless otherwise noted.