[needusername]

Yeah, you should have. An application is not supposed to implement JDBC. The database driver is supposed to implemented JDBC. If your application implements JDBC you're doing it wrong.

Just like nobody walks around and complains that new versions of the servlet API break any Java web application because web applications are not supposed to implement the servlet API. That's the job of the server.

[pjmlp]

Someone needs to implement those drivers...

[needusername]

Yeah, but not your application. If the driver specification gets updated it's not really surprising that the drivers will need to be updated. But the same is true for every specification. However your application doesn't need to be changed.

[pjmlp]

Those drivers can be application specific, as it was the case in the application I had to fix. Why it was made so, will be kept under the covers of the NDA agreement.

Another use case, many developers mock JDBC by creating their own dummy drivers, specially in large companies where mocking libraries are frown upon.

[needusername]

> Those drivers can be application specific,

Nope, they are database specific.

So we went from "would break any application using JDBC" to large company rolling their own database drivers for reasons that can't be disclosed (probably to protect the guilty).

> as it was the case in the application I had to fix. Why it was made so, will be kept under the covers of the NDA agreement.

Standard case of a large company doing it wrong and blaming somebody else when it comes back to bite them rather than fixing it. And hiding behind an NDA. Seriously what was the expectation? That JDBC never changes? Because at that time JDBC was already at version 3.0 which is obviously the final version after which no features would ever be added again.

> Another use case, many developers mock JDBC by creating their own dummy drivers, specially in large companies where mocking libraries are frown upon.

If you're doing it wrong then you're doing it wrong. Nobody to blame but yourself. Just because you're a large company doesn't make it right. Part of why it's wrong is that it will come back and bite you later on. And that's the problem in this case? The compiler tells you where you need to implement which methods.

Two give you two other examples. Interfaces for HTTP likely need to be updated when something in HTTP changes (WebSockets, HTTP/2). Servers implementing this will need to be updated to implement this. You don't accuse the language of the web server to make a breaking change. That's just how these things work. Same for SSL/TLS features like SNI. Sure it could be that you absolutely have to run your own web server or SSL/TLS implementations for reasons that you can't disclose because you're under an NDA. But then you expect that you'll have to maintain them and add additional features, don't you?