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 Looking for specific information on webMethods JDBC adapter compatibility with Oracle OCI drivers and servers

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Gerardo Lisboa's profile image
Gerardo Lisboa posted Tue February 04, 2025 06:00 AM

Hello,

The 10.3 (latest) JDBC adapter documentation [1] indicates that the document for "IBM webMethods Adapters System Requirements" [2] would state which Oracle driver and server combinations are good to be used in the webMethods Integration Servers, but it fails to address to specific driver and server subversions.

Does anyone knows where to find this information?




[1] https://docs.webmethods.io/on-premises/webmethods-adapter-for-jdbc/en/10.3.0/webhelp/index.html#page/jdbc-webhelp%2Fco-about_the_adapter.html%23

[2] Go to https://docs.webmethods.io/ and search for "requirements".

Thank You.

Dave Laycock's profile image
Dave Laycock posted Wed February 05, 2025 11:40 AM  Best Answer

The information is here:
https://docs.webmethods.io/on-premises/webmethods-adapters/en/11.1.0/pdf/webmethods-adapters-system-requirements.pdf

· Oracle JDBC Thin Driver 9.0.1 (Mac OS )
· Oracle JDBC OCI Driver
· Oracle JDBC Thin Driver (all other OSs)
· DataDirect driver shipped with Host Integration Server

I recommend using the newest version of the Oracle Long Term Release thin driver that supports your database and Java version
https://www.oracle.com/ca-en/database/technologies/appdev/jdbc-downloads.html
E.g. the long term release 19c driver ojdbc10.jar is certified with JDK11, JDK17, JDK19, and JDK21



If you don't want to provide an external driver at all, you could try the bundled DataDirect driver. That is a fairly new option and I would be reluctant to use it. 






Cobus Boshoff's profile image
Cobus Boshoff posted Wed February 05, 2025 03:27 AM

Hi Gerardo,

As far as I know webMethods adapter for JDBC can use any version of the Oracle JDBC driver (ojdbc17.jar).  We usually choose the latest driver or you can check which version is compatible with the Oracle Database version.  

I've never seen any documented requirements for the specific driver version.

Kind Regards,

Cobus Boshoff

Holger von Thomsen's profile image
Holger von Thomsen posted Wed February 05, 2025 11:01 AM

Hi Gerardo,

please keep in mind, that the number in the driver jar name indicates the minimum Java version the driver will work with.

Preferably, the Adapter Connections should use the Thin-Mode of the driver as this is platform independent, whilst the OCI-Mode requires an additional native lib, which might not be available for all platforms on which webMethods can be used.

As far as I know all recent oracle drivers can connect to any database version beginning with Oracle 9i R2 thru latest Oracle database releases.

Regards,

Holger

Christoph Jahn's profile image
Christoph Jahn posted Mon February 10, 2025 06:01 AM

While I do not have a direct answer for your question, I would like to point out that OCI drivers come with some potential issues. Those are NOT specific to webMethods, but are "part of the deal" when using native (non-Java) libraries with JNI. Another prominent example are SAP JCO libraries that can(!) cause similar problems.

As already mentioned you need an OS-specific driver that has its own dependencies and therefore deployment challenges.

The bigger thing is that such native drivers can completely kill the entire JVM. This cannot be avoided and is a risk you have to live with. You would not even see a single line in any log file or a stack trace. The entire JVM would simply be gone.

I cannot say how probable such a scenario is nowadays. The last time I had to deal with OCI drivers was more than 15 years ago. Also, I have not seen anyone use OCI drivers since then. At the time they supported a few exotic things that were not possible with JDBC and also seemed to have better performance (no idea how much better).

Can you share why you specifically need to use OCI drivers?