Message-ID: <gh-pgjdbc-pgjdbc-3779-c3207633216@github.com>
From: "vlsi (@vlsi)" <noreply+vlsi@github.com>
To: "pgjdbc/pgjdbc" <noreply+pgjdbc-pgjdbc@github.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2025 18:48:10 +0000
Subject: Re: [pgjdbc/pgjdbc] issue #3779: SQLException subclasses support
In-Reply-To: <gh-pgjdbc-pgjdbc-3779@github.com>
References: <gh-pgjdbc-pgjdbc-3779@github.com>
List-Id: <gh-pgjdbc-pgjdbc.github.com>
X-GitHub-Author-Login: vlsi
X-GitHub-Comment-Id: 3207633216
X-GitHub-Comment-Type: issue_comment
X-GitHub-Issue: 3779
X-GitHub-Repo: pgjdbc/pgjdbc
X-GitHub-Type: comment
X-GitHub-Url: https://github.com/pgjdbc/pgjdbc/issues/3779#issuecomment-3207633216
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

The culprit is that `PSQLException extends SQLException`, and we have tons of code that already catch `PSQLException` or cast `Throwable` to `PSQLException`. `PSQLException` predates `SQLRecoverableException`, so I would rather say JDBC spec is not backward-compatible when it comes to `SQLException` subtypes.

Note that a single application might have **multiple** libraries that are either prepared or unprepared to `SQLRecoverableException`.

I've asked ChatGPT, and it did not provide trivial approach to migrating pgjdbc to exception subtypes: https://chatgpt.com/share/68a6162a-8ca4-800f-a0db-a8e5ab0651df

I don't think a connection-wide property like `throw_exceptions_as=psqlexception | psqlexception_subtypes` is not viable as, well, there might be multiple libraries which are either prepared or unprepared to throwable subtypes.

----

I think it might be a nice idea to have a mapper utility which would take `PSQLException` as an input and produce typed exception in return.
It won't be completely portable though.

Do you have any other suggestion?