As part of 10.8, it would be good to implement JDBC 4.1, a smallish set
of changes which are part of the larger Java 7 effort. The JDBC 4.1 work
is described by the functional spec attached to DERBY-4869.
The good news is that we will not face the licensing hurdles which
complicated the release of JDBC 4.0 functionality in Derby 10.2. You may
recall that we were not allowed to use the early access Java 6 compiler
in order to build a product. That meant that we could not compile our
JDBC 4.0 support into the first release of Derby 10.2.
The same restriction applies to the early access Java 7 compiler.
However, we do not need to use the Java 7 compiler in order to build
the JDBC 4.1 bits. That is because we will not need any new classes or
language features introduced by Java 7.
In short, we should be able to build Derby 10.8 purely with the Java 6
compiler. I do not anticipate any licensing problems with the 10.8 release.
Thanks,
-Rick
