[dbcp] SQLNestedException thrown by server causes client ClassNotFoundException.

• Key: DBCP-143
• Type: Bug
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Andreas Krüger
• Fix Version/s: 2.0

Environment

Operating System: other
Platform: Other

Description

This is a GUI client / application server / database server application.

On the GUI client side, we see java.lang.ClassNotFoundException:
org.apache.commons.dbcp.SQLNestedException.

This happens when the database server is down, DBCP cannot connect to the
database, and throws a org.apache.commons.dbcp.SQLNestedException.

Our application server code sends the java.sql.SQLException it sees to the
client via RMI.

However, on the client, we have not provided commons-dbcp.jar.

And I don't think we should - DBCP is server code.

But, when the client does not have SQLNestedException's class file, the attempt
to de-serialize it results in the ClassNotFoundException we've been seeing.

Even old http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/sql/SQLException.html has
the facilities that SQLNestedExcepion offers: It is able to chain another
SQLException to itself. So while SQLNestedException clearly causes problems, I
don't understand what DBCP gains from it.

What would we loose if it were scratched?

Comments

[Henri Yandell]

It was there in 1.2 too.

Looking at the source, the only part of SQLNestedException used is the SQLNestedException(String,Throwable). However sometimes that latter argument is not a SQLException; which would be one reason not to use the setNextException message.

Another alternative would be to bring the minimum JDK up to 1.4 and switch to standard exception chaining.

[Dain Sundstrom]

This patch replaces:

new SQLNestedException(msg, e);

with:

(SQLException) new SQLException(msg).initCause(e);

SQLNestedException has been deprecated in 1.3 and will be removed in 1.4

[Mark Thomas]

Removing the SQLNestedException would be an API breaking change so it would have to wait until a DBCP 2.0 release. To be perfectly honest, I don't see a 2.0 release on the horizon right now. However, I am not closing this as WONTFIX as it is always possible that there will be a 2.0 release at some point but please be aware that this is some time (possibly years) away.

[Mark Thomas]

Forgot to include this:

See http://markmail.org/thread/qd2mowgifkka2gkd for further discussion on this very topic.