Upgrading commons DBCP from 1.2 to 1.4, should I be afraid?

Question

I was wondering if there were any big known issues out there. After upgrading the jar in my project, everything compiled. I didn't really see anything in the release notes that made me shudder, but I want to double check.

Answer 1

Actually, after near than 3 years of inactivity (version 1.2.2 has been release the 2007-04-04), Apache Commons DBCP has finally been taken out of dormancy and versions 1.3 and 1.4 have been released the 2010-02-14. From the release notes:

This release includes new features as well as bug fixes and enhancements. Some bug fixes change semantics (e.g. connection close is now idempotent). The 1.3 and 1.4 releases of DBCP are built from the same sources. Version 1.4 supports JDBC 4, so requires JDK 1.6. Applications running under JDK 1.4-1.5 must use DBCP 1.3. Applications running under JDK 1.6 should use DBCP 1.4. Other than support for the added methods in JDBC 4, there is nothing new or different in DBCP 1.4 vs. DBCP 1.3. The list of changes below since 1.2.2 applies to both the 1.3 and 1.4 release. Other than the one issue related to adding JDBC 4 support (DBCP-191), all bug fixes or new features are included in both DBCP 1.3 and 1.4

See the change log for 1.4 for an exhaustive list of changes but globally, this release is really a good thing, DBCP has/had some nasty bugs that really need to be fixed.

Regarding compatibility, the general policy for Commons component is to be upward compatible, which is somehow why two versions were released (see this discussion). My point is that nothing should break by upgrading to 1.4 or 1.3. But keep in mind that 1.4 won't be usable with older JVMs.