java - rs.last() gives Invalid operation for forward only resultset : last

Question

I am trying to get the row count of a result set by:

rs.last();
int row_count = rs.getRow();

but im getting an Invalid operation for forward only resultset : last error. The result set is getting its data from an Oracle 10g database.

Here is how i set up my connection:

    Class.forName("oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver");
    String connectionString = "jdbc:oracle:thin:@" + oracle_ip_address + ":" + oracle_db_port + ":" + oracle_db_sid;
    Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(connectionString, oracle_db_username, oracle_db_password);

Answer 1

ResultSet.last() and other "absolutely-indexed" query operations are only available when the result set is scrollable; otherwise, you can only iterate one-by-one through the forward-only result set.

The following example (from the javadocs) demonstrates how to create a scrollable ResultSet.

Statement stmt = con.createStatement(
    ResultSet.TYPE_SCROLL_INSENSITIVE,
    ResultSet.CONCUR_READ_ONLY
);
ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("SELECT a, b FROM TABLE2");

Keep in mind that there are performance implications to using scrollable queries. If the goal of this particular ResultSet is only to grab its last value, please consider refining your query to return only that result.