title: oracle jdbc driver version madness
body: <p>Why the heck does Oracle offer a different(!) version of the JDBC driver, e.g. ojdbc14.jar, for every(!) database version?<br>
  The files all have different sizes and thus probably different content.</p>
  
  <p>background:<br>
  We get a random and seemingly irreproducible error saying "invalid number" when saving data (we guess it's the Timestamp). But it's not any particular statement. Most of the time, it saves just fine. Just once a month a harmless looking statement will fail.</p>
  
  <p>So i had a closer look at Oracle's download site and noticed that none of the filesizes match despite files sharing the same name.</p>
  
  <p>Our product is run on databases maintained by our clients, i.e. whatever version and patch the clients have running is what it is.<br>
  So what driver do we use? The latest (Oracle 11g) - despite the fact that it's usually <strike>9i and</strike> 10g databases?</p>
  
  <p>Why don't they just link all versions to the same "one driver suits all" file?<br>
  Or are there minute differences leading to effects like our random errors?</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: i was mistaken about the 9i databases.</p>