rs.getString() -> Invalid Descriptor Index Error

Post full code

Is this line:

sUID = rs.getString("UID");

exactly as written, does it look like this:

sUID = rs.getString(5);

If it looks like the second line, then you may be looking for a column index that does not exist. If it looks like the first, then it looks like the column name that you requested is not there.

Try this code to debug:

ResultSetMetaData rsmd = rs.getMetaData();
for (int i=0;i<rsmd.getColumnCount();i++)
{
    System.out.println("Column # " + i + " is " + rsmd.getColumnName());
}

You can then compare the column name printed out in the debug code to the ones you have in you rs.getString() calls.

 

i am using

sUID = rs.getString("UID");

and this field is in my recordset.

Did you check the ResultSetMetaData column names? The strings are case sensitive.

Hello, jsimoni. I had a simillar case, and you must do this.
1.-ResultSet rs= inetStatement.executeQuery("SELECT * FROM tblTable");
2.-ResultSetMetaData    metaData = null;
metaData = rs.getMetaData();
This is to get the number of colums and theirs names.
3.- for example for obtains all the columns:
int_numCol = metaData.getColumnCount();
4.-Imagine that all the rows of the query will be stored in a vector() (one for row) called fila (Vector fila = new Vector())
for (int i=0;i<int_numCol;i++){
fila.addElement((String) rs.getString(metaData.getColumnLabel(int_i+1)));

5.- Now you have in the vector fila one row from the query.

You must use the Metadata from the resulset because the strings are case sensitive.
Good Luck!

ResultSetMetaData is typically used in situations where a ResultSet has been generated but the object processing the ResultSet that doesn't necessarily know the contents. That object then needs to interrogate the ResultSet to gather information. ResultSetMetaData also contains additional information which cannot be intuited from the ResultSet itself such as column display size, display label, size and precision, etc.

In this case, unless I missed something about your problem, I don't think it is necessary to make the problem that complex. Your program prepared an SQL statement, executed it, and now holds a ResultSet from which you want the column values. You know when you write the program specifically which columns you want from the table. If all you need from the metadata is the names of the columns, then my suggestion remains to either specify the columns in the select statement instead of using '*' and use the getXXX(String name) methods or use the getXXX(int index) methods. Otherwise, your application will be performing unnecessary work by interrogating the ResultSetMetaData for each column by index just to get the name so that you can then interrogate the ResultSet by column name. If you need that flexibility -- great, go for it. If not, ...

BTW, to add to my statements in the previous post about not using "SELECT *" in programmatic SQL, I'll add that it has the potential to adversely impact performance. If the table being queried has, say, 10 columns, and you only need half of them in a specific application, retrieving all the columns is unnecessary overhead requiring additional work on the part of the database engine, additional transmission time to push the results from the database to your application, additional time extracting the values from the ResultSet in your application, and additional memory resources at each stage. Add to that the coupling and dependency issues I mentioned previously and you get a flavor for why we discourage using "SELECT *" in a program. Use it freely when querying the database by hand. I hate typing column names unless I absolutely must. But take more care in your code where you will be typing the names just once.

Best regards,
Jim Cakalic

i had tried .findColumn() to get the index of the column and .getString() using that index.  the .findColumn() worked and returned a valid index, but the .getString() still failed.

i usually don't use "SELECT *", but in this case i want to pull back all of the columns.  but by changing it to specify all the column names in my select statement it did work.