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Not sure what to make of this question. On the one hand, it's an extremely well-written question and an even better answer. They are written by the same person, which is totally allowed.

But...

It's clearly a product announcement in Q&A clothing. I definitely don't want to see posts like this for every new open-source library that someone creates. I am not sure where to draw the line, but I wanted to get some community discussion going before I took any moderation actions.

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10
  • Given other contributions (and no directly identifiable link between the OP and the "product", though I might have missed something) I have to assume good faith for now. Maybe it's something the OP resolved and tried to mould into a good Q&A pair?
    – Bart
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:14
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    Extremely well written question... eh, not really. The last paragraph is the only real part of the question. The rest of it is completely unrelated to the question. "I want to use this one thing, but let me tell you why I don't want to use this other thing."
    – animuson StaffMod
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:20
  • Meh, one could argue that the first part addresses a likely "why don't you just use.." comment @animuson. But yeah, in light of the answer it's all a bit fluffy.
    – Bart
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:22
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    That "fluff" is the part that really makes it read like marketing material, though. It's not a specific "how I do X with Y", it's more like "I have this problem, and Y can solve it, is that true?"
    – Ernest Friedman-Hill
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:25
  • Sure @ErnestFriedman-Hill. And that's what made me suspicious as well. I've left a comment for the OP pointing to this discussion. Perhaps he can tell us his story. Though I don't immediately see evidence for actual spam, even if it's reads like that at first glance.
    – Bart
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:28
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    As an additional note, this don't look like a new open-source library though. The SourceForge project is registered on Nov 2012. I'm still assuming good faith. But the post itself has some issues: 1) The first part of question doesn't fit on SO, instead it's better for SoftwareRecs. 2) The answer is just a general step-by-step for any .jar libraries.
    – Meta Andrew T.
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:28
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    I just asked him if he had any affiliation, apparently not. Bit of an odd question though.
    – Joe
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:29
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    To quote "I have no involvement in or affiliation with the UCanAccess project. I just use it."
    – Bart
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:29
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    All considered I think this would be best suited for the tag wiki of that particular software product considering the answer is a very general walkthrough for all jar files.
    – Jeroen Vannevel
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:30
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    I wish all self answered questions were of this quality.
    – david strachan
    Feb 23, 2014 at 20:05

2 Answers 2

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17

I wrote it because I keep seeing the same JDBC-ODBC Bridge questions coming up repeatedly and there are several reasons why using the JDBC-ODBC Bridge with Access ODBC is a bad idea. (Hence the first part of the question.)

I was also hoping that if there were any other alternatives out there that somebody else would answer. (Notice that I didn't accept my own answer right away.) Would it be better if I added "...or some other solution" to the end of the question?

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  • 1
    Given the introduction in the question, which then ends with "I have seen other answers mentioning a JDBC driver for Access databases named UCanAccess. How can I set up my Java project to use this approach?" I guess you could leave out that last paragraph altogether. Or indeed add the "or some other solution" and then remove the "UCanAccess is a pure Java JDBC driver that allows us to read from and write to Access databases without using ODBC." from the answer. Having it in both the question and the answer feels like spam. (Even though now I know it is not.)
    – Arjan
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:47
  • By the way: I like the reasons (the bullets) you give in your question. Nice research.
    – Arjan
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:49
  • Thanks for this. I went back and upvoted the original question and answer!
    – Ernest Friedman-Hill
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:51
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    @Gord The mention of that specific option in the question kind of limits the question to that specific option. It's not very inviting of other possibilities. But then, inviting other possibilities might make this too broad and open to real spam.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:54
  • @animuson Good point. I will edit the question to make it more open to other solutions.
    – Gord Thompson
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:59
  • And totally as an aside, given the question "How can I set up my Java project to use this approach?" and the screenshots to answer that, makes me love Maven even more. ;-)
    – Arjan
    Feb 22, 2014 at 16:17
  • If you keep seeing the same questions, vote to close those questions as duplicates of a single canonical question
    – Raedwald
    Feb 23, 2014 at 15:16
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Just to confirm that it's only a great Q&A:

  • I'm the UCanAccess author
  • I posted it on Sourceforge about one year ago
  • it's a totally free and independent project
  • I don't know the Q&A author

I obviously appreciate very much all questions and answers about UCanAccess: it means that someone, overseas, is using my library. So thank you for that.

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