7.2 Using JDBC Statement Objects to Execute SQL

Statement objects allow you to execute basic SQL queries and retrieve the results through the ResultSet class, which is described later.

To create a Statement instance, you call the createStatement() method on the Connection object you have retrieved using one of the DriverManager.getConnection() or DataSource.getConnection() methods described earlier.

Once you have a Statement instance, you can execute a SELECT query by calling the executeQuery(String) method with the SQL you want to use.

To update data in the database, use the executeUpdate(String SQL) method. This method returns the number of rows matched by the update statement, not the number of rows that were modified.

If you do not know ahead of time whether the SQL statement will be a SELECT or an UPDATE/INSERT, then you can use the execute(String SQL) method. This method will return true if the SQL query was a SELECT, or false if it was an UPDATE, INSERT, or DELETE statement. If the statement was a SELECT query, you can retrieve the results by calling the getResultSet() method. If the statement was an UPDATE, INSERT, or DELETE statement, you can retrieve the affected rows count by calling getUpdateCount() on the Statement instance.

Example 7.2 Connector/J: Using java.sql.Statement to execute a SELECT query

import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import java.sql.Statement;
import java.sql.ResultSet;

// assume that conn is an already created JDBC connection (see previous examples)

Statement stmt = null;
ResultSet rs = null;

try {
    stmt = conn.createStatement();
    rs = stmt.executeQuery("SELECT foo FROM bar");

    // or alternatively, if you don't know ahead of time that
    // the query will be a SELECT...

    if (stmt.execute("SELECT foo FROM bar")) {
        rs = stmt.getResultSet();
    }

    // Now do something with the ResultSet ....
}
catch (SQLException ex){
    // handle any errors
    System.out.println("SQLException: " + ex.getMessage());
    System.out.println("SQLState: " + ex.getSQLState());
    System.out.println("VendorError: " + ex.getErrorCode());
}
finally {
    // it is a good idea to release
    // resources in a finally{} block
    // in reverse-order of their creation
    // if they are no-longer needed

    if (rs != null) {
        try {
            rs.close();
        } catch (SQLException sqlEx) { } // ignore

        rs = null;
    }

    if (stmt != null) {
        try {
            stmt.close();
        } catch (SQLException sqlEx) { } // ignore

        stmt = null;
    }
}