PostgreSQL JDBC 42.2.1 released

The PostgreSQL JDBC team is pleased to announce the release of version 42.2.1.

This is primarily to fix some regressions:

Most notably:

• Avoid connection failure when DateStyle is set to ISO (~PgBouncer) Issue 1080
• Package scram:client classes, so SCRAM works when using a shaded jar PR#1091 1a89290e
• reWriteBatchedInserts=true causes syntax error with ON CONFLICT Issue 1045PR 1082
• Avoid failure in getPGArrayType when stringType=unspecified PR 1036

Implementing SCRAM in the JDBC driver

PostgreSQL 10.0 has a fancy new authentication mechanism; Salted Challenge Response Authentication Method or SCRAM for short.

SCRAM will be an alternative to the somewhat controversial MD5 passwords currently being used by PostgreSQL, Michael Paquier has more to say on that here

This post isn't so much about SCRAM but the implementation of it in the JDBC driver. Last year in Ottawa at pgcon Alvaro from 8kdata stepped up and volunteered to write the Java implementation for the driver.

We've decided to enable this in Java 8+ versions of the driver only for a number of reasons the most important being that the cryptographic libraries required to implement this are only available in the JDK from version 8 and up.

Also factoring into the decision is the fact that SCRAM is only available in PostgreSQL 10.0+ and we are of the opinion that there will be very few people that will upgrade or use PostgreSQL 10.x without upgrading their JDK as well.