Which Informix JDBC driver should I use?

Question

Look at this page: http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/search.jsp?go=y&rs=ifxjdbc

I see that the 3.50.JC9 is newer than 3.70JC3DE, which is confusing.

I tested both of them connecting to an IDS 11.5 and 10.0 and both seems to work OK.

Does anyone knows in which conditions should I use either the 3.50 or 3.70 JDBC drivers?

Answer 1

The JDBC 3.50.JC9 driver is a fix pack to the 3.50 series of drivers, and was simply released after the 3.70.JC3DE version, which is also a fix pack but to the 3.70 series. These versions parallel the 11.50 and 11.70 versions of Informix Dynamic Server, IDS, and have the same base version as the CSDK, Client SDK (3.50.UCx, 3.50.FCx, etc).

If you have IDS 11.50, then JDBC 3.50 was the version released at the same time as IDS. It may well make sense to use the 3.50 driver if it works for you. On the other hand, the latest and greatest is the 3.70 version; it works with 10.00, 11.10, 11.50, 11.70 versions of IDS. Although the older versions of JDBC will work with IDS 11.70, the recommended version of JDBC for IDS 11.70 would be JDBC 3.70.

Note that IDS 10.00 is no longer supported by IBM for normal purposes. (Some customers probably have special support contracts for it; some customers may be using it without support.)