I'm uncertain as to how to get the number of rows affected from a SQL execution.

I do like this:

boolean isResultSet = statement.execute(arbitrarySQLCommand);

and I can get the number of rows affected from the getUpdateCount() method. That is all fine. The problem I have is when update count is zero. This can either mean:

  1. It was a DML statement but it didn't affect any rows. Zero rows affected is a valid response. I just means that some condition was not met.

  2. It was a non-DML statement (DDL statement most likely) .. which by definition does not change rows so therefore update count is always zero (duh!). Or to put it another way: The concept of update count is meaningless for such statements.

What I would like is to be able to distinguish between situation 1 and 2 above. How?

I'm not interested in statements that produce output so I could also use executeUpdate() but as I see it the return value from that method has the same flaw:

Returns:

either (1) the row count for SQL Data Manipulation Language (DML) statements or (2) 0 for SQL statements that return nothing

Arghhh!
I wish it was:

Returns:

either (1) the row count for SQL Data Manipulation Language (DML) statements or (2) -1 for SQL statements that return nothing



(note: I do not know the contents of arbitrarySQLCommand beforehand)



Final chosen solution

There just doesn't seem to be a true JDBC-like solution to the problem. In my mind the designers of JDBC has made a serious mistake on the getUpdateCount by using the

java jdbc
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