Will, This is the intend reply. I use both Ingres and PostgreSQL databases in my applications and use the JDBC api to interact with the database. To do this, I created in IngresDataSourceFactory that implements org.osgi.service.jdbc.DataSourceFactory.DataSourceFactory bundle so my application bundles just @Reference Datasource. I also loaded the Ingres JDBC driver as a wrapped jar, `bundle:install wrap:mvn:....` Karaf/OSGi and configuration take care of the rest after the datasource is in Karaf is created.
See the following. https://karaf.apache.org/manual/latest/#_creating_bundles_for_non_osgi_third_party_dependencies https://karaf.apache.org/manual/latest/#_datasources_jdbc Paul Spencer
