Oracle – use OJDBC7 on a Oracle 11gR2 database

jdbcoracleoracle11g

Can we use Oracle 11g database with ojdbc7 for Oracle 12c (12.1) without any problem. Will new JDBC driver for Oracle Database 12c including a Java 7 JDBC driver (ojdbc7 – 12.1.0.1) still work If I upgrade my application server containing ojdbc7 for Oracle 12c.

Can we use Oracle 11g database with ojdbc7 for Oracle 12c (12.1) without any problem.

Best Answer

Yes you can, as shown in the table in the Oracle JDBC FAQ entry Which version of JDBC drivers support which version of Oracle database?:

Please refer to the table below for the Oracle database versions supported by JDBC drivers. Best Practice that we recommend is, JDBC driver version should always be either same as or higher than the Oracle database version being used in order to leverage the latest capabilities of the JDBC driver.

Interoperability Matrix  DB 12.2.0.1  DB 12.1.0.x  DB 11.2.0.x
JDBC 12.2.0.1            Yes          Yes          Yes
JDBC 12.1.0.x            Yes          Yes          Yes
JDBC 11.2.0.x            Yes          Yes          Yes

In other words, you can even upgrade to Oracle JDBC driver version 12.2.0.1 (which only supports Java 8), and still use that with Oracle 11g.

The driver might even work with earlier versions of Oracle, but this is not officially supported.

Note that ojdbc7 is not an indication of version, it just indicates that Java version it targets (ojdbc6 -> Java 6, ojdbc7 -> Java 7, ojdbc8 -> Java 8), and that again determines the supported JDBC specification version.

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