"There are reliable solutions to this problem. We had floated the idea of using middleware from Openlink Software (
http://www.openlinksw.com) for all our relational
database adapters, writing to an interface they provide that abstracts out the connection-layer differences. But it's not open source, and using more than five
connections against any particular database requires a license from Openlink. I don't exactly know what happened to this plan. It just sort of fizzled. We don't want
to be in the business of maintaining our existing database adapters every time Oracle or Sybase spurts out a new release. It's just not a good use of time here. It
would be much better for us to throw this job over the wall to Openlink and write to their interface. But for now, we're stuck maintaining the ones we've written. "
Do the drivers really need to change that much every time oracle or sybase releases a new version? I wouldn't think so. Besides, if you do have prolems with the driver, do you really want to be dealing with a third-party closed source solution?