Should DatabaseMetaData.getTypeInfo() return OBJECT in soft upgrade mode

[Kathey Marsden <km...@sbcglobal.net>]

I was wondering, should DatabaseMetaData.getSQLTypes() return OBJECT in 
soft ugprade mode?

I was running 10.5.3 tests against a soft upgraded database to 10.6 and 
see quite a few fail because this is included. Should it be in soft 
upgrade mode?

Thanks

Kathey

Re: Should DatabaseMetaData.getTypeInfo() return OBJECT in soft upgrade mode

[Kathey Marsden <km...@sbcglobal.net>]

On 5/6/2010 9:07 AM, Rick Hillegas wrote:
> Thanks for testing soft-upgrade. My feeling is that this new behavior 
> corrects a bug in 10.5 and previous releases.
Thanks Rick. I think the soft upgrade behavior is ok or at least a 
pretty minor bug. I probably wouldn't go so far as to say it was a 
previous bug as it  like BOOLEAN is not a type available to user 
tables.  I would think typical usage of getTypeInfo() would be to branch 
table creation logic if types are available for use.

Kathey

Re: Should DatabaseMetaData.getTypeInfo() return OBJECT in soft upgrade mode

[Rick Hillegas <ri...@oracle.com>]

Kathey Marsden wrote:
> I was wondering, should DatabaseMetaData.getSQLTypes() return OBJECT 
> in soft ugprade mode?
>
> I was running 10.5.3 tests against a soft upgraded database to 10.6 
> and see quite a few fail because this is included. Should it be in 
> soft upgrade mode?
>
> Thanks
>
> Kathey
>
>
Hi Kathey,

Thanks for testing soft-upgrade. My feeling is that this new behavior 
corrects a bug in 10.5 and previous releases. I believe that in older 
releases, DatabasebaseMetaData.getTypeInfo() ought to return the row for 
the OBJECT type because the system catalogs contain object columns (e.g. 
SYSCONGLOMERATES.DESCRIPTOR). In the embedded driver in old releases, 
the corresponding call to DatabaseMetaData.getColumns() reports that 
SYSCONGLOMERATES.DESCRIPTOR is of JAVA_OBJECT type and has typename 
"org.apache.derby.catalog.IndexDescriptor".

In my opinion, the metadata for the object columns in the system 
catalogs is not consistent within either of Derby's JDBC drivers nor 
across them. I think that soft-upgrade to 10.6 improves the situation 
and hard-upgrade to 10.6 makes the situation even better. We could put 
effort into improving the metadata for these columns in older release 
branches. However, I think that would be a low value project.

Thanks,
-Rick