Since Java 6 / JDBC 4 it has been possible (and normal practice) to open a Connection without specifying the driver or attempting to load its class. Unfortunately if I omit the driver name in DataNucleus (JPA api), it attempts to load a driver class with the name "" (i.e. an empty string), and then fails.
True, but before putting in the effort I prefer to discover if the project maintainers are in favour of such a change. I also don't know if a similar problem afflicts other JPA implementations.
I have been a little surprised recently, to discover that many people remain unaware that specifying the driver class is unnecessary in JDBC 4.
Since JPA and JDO specs were written for earlier JDKs then I guess they have never been updated to reflect what more recent JDBC specs mandate. Since DataNucleus (v5+) supports JRE 1.8+ ONLY then there is no issue with including JDBC4+ semantics. What other JPA providers do or not you'd have to ask them
