What are the advantages of installing JDBC Driver as a Module in WildFly

Question

This link explains the new things about WildFly. Under the Migrating The Database Connection -> JDBC Driver the article explains about two ways of using jdbc drivers for the applications. I tried with installing it as a module and it works fine. The problem is which way is better and when it is better, whether deploy it as any other application package or install it as a module? (I noted that install it as a module is necessary for clustered environment. I am looking for, are there any other reasons?)

Answer 1

I think the correct link to the article you are referencing is this one : http://wildfly.org/news/2014/02/06/GlassFish-to-WildFly-migration/ (The other one does not seem to point to the article you are mentioning)

Below is the interesting part from "Migrating The Database Connection" section you are referencing:

On WildFly, you have two ways of installing the JDBC driver: whether you deploy it as any other application package or you install it as a module. You can always choose to deploy the driver, but it’s specially recommend when you have a cluster environment, since the deployments are automatically propagated in the server groups. You may have issues with the deployment if the driver is not JDBC4-compliant. In this case, installing the driver as a module solves those issues. The advantage of the JDBC driver as a module is the possibility of creating a custom WildFly bundle for your organization. This way, you can repeat exactly the same installation throughout several machines, preserving the same configuration. This is perfect for the development environment.

So in this section, the author describes the following advantage:

You may have issues with the deployment if the driver is not JDBC4-compliant. In this case, installing the driver as a module solves those issues.

The following Wildfly documentation describes this also:

Any JDBC 4-compliant driver will automatically be recognized and installed into the system by name and version. A JDBC JAR is identified using the Java service provider mechanism. Such JARs will contain a text a file named META-INF/services/java.sql.Driver, which contains the name of the class(es) of the Drivers which exist in that JAR. If your JDBC driver JAR is not JDBC 4-compliant, it can be made deployable in one of a few ways. (...)

Thus, deploying your driver as a module is easier than deploying it as any other application package in case it is not JDBC-4 compliant. (Because you would have to modify and rebuild your JDBC-4 not compliant jar to deploy it as any other application package)