You can choose among several approaches to form the basis for your JDBC database access. In addition to three flavors of the JdbcTemplate, a new SimpleJdbcInsert and SimplejdbcCall approach optimizes database metadata, and the RDBMS Object style takes a more object-oriented approach similar to that of JDO Query design. Once you start using one of these approaches, you can still mix and match to include a feature from a different approach. All approaches require a JDBC 2.0-compliant driver, and some advanced features require a JDBC 3.0 driver.

The Spring Framework’s JDBC abstraction framework consists of four different packages, namely core, datasource, object, and support.

The org.springframework.jdbc.core package contains the JdbcTemplate class and its various callback interfaces, plus a variety of related classes. A subpackage named org.springframework.jdbc.core.simple contains the SimpleJdbcInsert and SimpleJdbcCall classes. Another subpackage named org.springframework.jdbc.core.namedparam contains the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class and the related support classes. See Section 18.2, “Using the JDBC core classes to control basic JDBC processing and error handling”, Section 18.4, “JDBC batch operations”, and Section 18.5, “Simplifying JDBC operations with the SimpleJdbc classes”.

The org.springframework.jdbc.datasource package contains a utility class for easy DataSource access, and various simple DataSource implementations that can be used for testing and running unmodified JDBC code outside of a Java EE container. A subpackage named org.springfamework.jdbc.datasource.embedded provides support for creating embedded databases using Java database engines such as HSQL, H2, and Derby. See Section 18.3, “Controlling database connections” and Section 18.8, “Embedded database support”.

The org.springframework.jdbc.object package contains classes that represent RDBMS queries, updates, and stored procedures as thread-safe, reusable objects. See Section 18.6, “Modeling JDBC operations as Java objects”. This approach is modeled by JDO, although objects returned by queries are naturally disconnected from the database. This higher level of JDBC abstraction depends on the lower-level abstraction in the org.springframework.jdbc.core package.

The org.springframework.jdbc.support package provides SQLException translation functionality and some utility classes. Exceptions thrown during JDBC processing are translated to exceptions defined in the org.springframework.dao package. This means that code using the Spring JDBC abstraction layer does not need to implement JDBC or RDBMS-specific error handling. All translated exceptions are unchecked, which gives you the option of catching the exceptions from which you can recover while allowing other exceptions to be propagated to the caller. See Section 18.2.3, “SQLExceptionTranslator”.

The JdbcTemplate class is the central class in the JDBC core package. It handles the creation and release of resources, which helps you avoid common errors such as forgetting to close the connection. It performs the basic tasks of the core JDBC workflow such as statement creation and execution, leaving application code to provide SQL and extract results. The JdbcTemplate class executes SQL queries, update statements and stored procedure calls, performs iteration over ResultSets and extraction of returned parameter values. It also catches JDBC exceptions and translates them to the generic, more informative, exception hierarchy defined in the org.springframework.dao package.

When you use the JdbcTemplate for your code, you only need to implement callback interfaces, giving them a clearly defined contract. The PreparedStatementCreator callback interface creates a prepared statement given a Connection provided by this class, providing SQL and any necessary parameters. The same is true for the CallableStatementCreator interface, which creates callable statements. The RowCallbackHandler interface extracts values from each row of a ResultSet.

The JdbcTemplate can be used within a DAO implementation through direct instantiation with a DataSource reference, or be configured in a Spring IoC container and given to DAOs as a bean reference.

	Note
	The DataSource should always be configured as a bean in the Spring IoC container. In the first case the bean is given to the service directly; in the second case it is given to the prepared template.

All SQL issued by this class is logged at the DEBUG level under the category corresponding to the fully qualified class name of the template instance (typically JdbcTemplate, but it may be different if you are using a custom subclass of the JdbcTemplate class).

int rowCount = this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject("select count(*) from t_actor", Integer.class);

int countOfActorsNamedJoe = this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject(
        "select count(*) from t_actor where first_name = ?", Integer.class, "Joe");

String lastName = this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject(
        "select last_name from t_actor where id = ?",
        new Object[]{1212L}, String.class);

Actor actor = this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject(
        "select first_name, last_name from t_actor where id = ?",
        new Object[]{1212L},
        new RowMapper<Actor>() {
            public Actor mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException {
                Actor actor = new Actor();
                actor.setFirstName(rs.getString("first_name"));
                actor.setLastName(rs.getString("last_name"));
                return actor;
            }
        });

List<Actor> actors = this.jdbcTemplate.query(
        "select first_name, last_name from t_actor",
        new RowMapper<Actor>() {
            public Actor mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException {
                Actor actor = new Actor();
                actor.setFirstName(rs.getString("first_name"));
                actor.setLastName(rs.getString("last_name"));
                return actor;
            }
        });

public List<Actor> findAllActors() {
    return this.jdbcTemplate.query( "select first_name, last_name from t_actor", new ActorMapper());
}

private static final class ActorMapper implements RowMapper<Actor> {

    public Actor mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException {
        Actor actor = new Actor();
        actor.setFirstName(rs.getString("first_name"));
        actor.setLastName(rs.getString("last_name"));
        return actor;
    }
}

this.jdbcTemplate.update(
        "insert into t_actor (first_name, last_name) values (?, ?)",
        "Leonor", "Watling");

this.jdbcTemplate.update(
        "update t_actor set last_name = ? where id = ?",
        "Banjo", 5276L);

this.jdbcTemplate.update(
        "delete from actor where id = ?",
        Long.valueOf(actorId));

this.jdbcTemplate.execute("create table mytable (id integer, name varchar(100))");

this.jdbcTemplate.update(
        "call SUPPORT.REFRESH_ACTORS_SUMMARY(?)",
        Long.valueOf(unionId));

public class JdbcCorporateEventDao implements CorporateEventDao {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
    }

    // JDBC-backed implementations of the methods on the CorporateEventDao follow...
}

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

    <bean id="corporateEventDao" class="com.example.JdbcCorporateEventDao">
        <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
        <property name="driverClassName" value="${jdbc.driverClassName}"/>
        <property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
        <property name="username" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
        <property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
    </bean>

    <context:property-placeholder location="jdbc.properties"/>

</beans>

@Repository
public class JdbcCorporateEventDao implements CorporateEventDao {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

    @Autowired
    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
    }

    // JDBC-backed implementations of the methods on the CorporateEventDao follow...
}

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

    <!-- Scans within the base package of the application for @Component classes to configure as beans -->
    <context:component-scan base-package="org.springframework.docs.test" />

    <bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
        <property name="driverClassName" value="${jdbc.driverClassName}"/>
        <property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
        <property name="username" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
        <property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
    </bean>

    <context:property-placeholder location="jdbc.properties"/>

</beans>

The NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class adds support for programming JDBC statements using named parameters, as opposed to programming JDBC statements using only classic placeholder ( '?') arguments. The NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class wraps a JdbcTemplate, and delegates to the wrapped JdbcTemplate to do much of its work. This section describes only those areas of the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class that differ from the JdbcTemplate itself; namely, programming JDBC statements using named parameters.

// some JDBC-backed DAO class...
private NamedParameterJdbcTemplate namedParameterJdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
    this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate = new NamedParameterJdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

public int countOfActorsByFirstName(String firstName) {

    String sql = "select count(*) from T_ACTOR where first_name = :first_name";

    SqlParameterSource namedParameters = new MapSqlParameterSource("first_name", firstName);

    return this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate.queryForObject(sql, namedParameters, Integer.class);
}

Notice the use of the named parameter notation in the value assigned to the sql variable, and the corresponding value that is plugged into the namedParameters variable (of type MapSqlParameterSource).

Alternatively, you can pass along named parameters and their corresponding values to a NamedParameterJdbcTemplate instance by using the Map-based style.The remaining methods exposed by the NamedParameterJdbcOperations and implemented by the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class follow a similar pattern and are not covered here.

The following example shows the use of the Map-based style.

// some JDBC-backed DAO class...
private NamedParameterJdbcTemplate namedParameterJdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
    this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate = new NamedParameterJdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

public int countOfActorsByFirstName(String firstName) {

    String sql = "select count(*) from T_ACTOR where first_name = :first_name";

    Map<String, String> namedParameters = Collections.singletonMap("first_name", firstName);

    return this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate.queryForObject(sql, namedParameters,  Integer.class);
}

One nice feature related to the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate (and existing in the same Java package) is the SqlParameterSource interface. You have already seen an example of an implementation of this interface in one of the previous code snippet (the MapSqlParameterSource class). An SqlParameterSource is a source of named parameter values to a NamedParameterJdbcTemplate. The MapSqlParameterSource class is a very simple implementation that is simply an adapter around a java.util.Map, where the keys are the parameter names and the values are the parameter values.

Another SqlParameterSource implementation is the BeanPropertySqlParameterSource class. This class wraps an arbitrary JavaBean (that is, an instance of a class that adheres to the JavaBean conventions), and uses the properties of the wrapped JavaBean as the source of named parameter values.

public class Actor {

    private Long id;
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;

    public String getFirstName() {
        return this.firstName;
    }

    public String getLastName() {
        return this.lastName;
    }

    public Long getId() {
        return this.id;
    }

    // setters omitted...

}

// some JDBC-backed DAO class...
private NamedParameterJdbcTemplate namedParameterJdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
    this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate = new NamedParameterJdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

public int countOfActors(Actor exampleActor) {

    // notice how the named parameters match the properties of the above 'Actor' class
    String sql = "select count(*) from T_ACTOR where first_name = :firstName and last_name = :lastName";

    SqlParameterSource namedParameters = new BeanPropertySqlParameterSource(exampleActor);

    return this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate.queryForObject(sql, namedParameters, Integer.class);
}

Remember that the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class wraps a classic JdbcTemplate template; if you need access to the wrapped JdbcTemplate instance to access functionality only present in the JdbcTemplate class, you can use the getJdbcOperations() method to access the wrapped JdbcTemplate through the JdbcOperations interface.

See also the section called “JdbcTemplate best practices” for guidelines on using the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class in the context of an application.

SQLExceptionTranslator is an interface to be implemented by classes that can translate between SQLExceptions and Spring’s own org.springframework.dao.DataAccessException, which is agnostic in regard to data access strategy. Implementations can be generic (for example, using SQLState codes for JDBC) or proprietary (for example, using Oracle error codes) for greater precision.

SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator is the implementation of SQLExceptionTranslator that is used by default. This implementation uses specific vendor codes. It is more precise than the SQLState implementation. The error code translations are based on codes held in a JavaBean type class called SQLErrorCodes. This class is created and populated by an SQLErrorCodesFactory which as the name suggests is a factory for creating SQLErrorCodes based on the contents of a configuration file named sql-error-codes.xml. This file is populated with vendor codes and based on the DatabaseProductName taken from the DatabaseMetaData. The codes for the actual database you are using are used.

The SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator applies matching rules in the following sequence:

	Note
	The SQLErrorCodesFactory is used by default to define Error codes and custom exception translations. They are looked up in a file named sql-error-codes.xml from the classpath and the matching SQLErrorCodes instance is located based on the database name from the database metadata of the database in use.

You can extend SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator:

public class CustomSQLErrorCodesTranslator extends SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator {

    protected DataAccessException customTranslate(String task, String sql, SQLException sqlex) {
        if (sqlex.getErrorCode() == -12345) {
            return new DeadlockLoserDataAccessException(task, sqlex);
        }
        return null;
    }
}

In this example, the specific error code -12345 is translated and other errors are left to be translated by the default translator implementation. To use this custom translator, it is necessary to pass it to the JdbcTemplate through the method setExceptionTranslator and to use this JdbcTemplate for all of the data access processing where this translator is needed. Here is an example of how this custom translator can be used:

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

    // create a JdbcTemplate and set data source
    this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate();
    this.jdbcTemplate.setDataSource(dataSource);

    // create a custom translator and set the DataSource for the default translation lookup
    CustomSQLErrorCodesTranslator tr = new CustomSQLErrorCodesTranslator();
    tr.setDataSource(dataSource);
    this.jdbcTemplate.setExceptionTranslator(tr);

}

public void updateShippingCharge(long orderId, long pct) {
    // use the prepared JdbcTemplate for this update
    this.jdbcTemplate.update("update orders" +
        " set shipping_charge = shipping_charge * ? / 100" +
        " where id = ?", pct, orderId);
}

The custom translator is passed a data source in order to look up the error codes in sql-error-codes.xml.

Executing an SQL statement requires very little code. You need a DataSource and a JdbcTemplate, including the convenience methods that are provided with the JdbcTemplate. The following example shows what you need to include for a minimal but fully functional class that creates a new table:

import javax.sql.DataSource;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate;

public class ExecuteAStatement {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
    }

    public void doExecute() {
        this.jdbcTemplate.execute("create table mytable (id integer, name varchar(100))");
    }
}

Some query methods return a single value. To retrieve a count or a specific value from one row, use queryForObject(..). The latter converts the returned JDBC Type to the Java class that is passed in as an argument. If the type conversion is invalid, then an InvalidDataAccessApiUsageException is thrown. Here is an example that contains two query methods, one for an int and one that queries for a String.

import javax.sql.DataSource;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate;

public class RunAQuery {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
    }

    public int getCount() {
        return this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject("select count(*) from mytable", Integer.class);
    }

    public String getName() {
        return this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject("select name from mytable", String.class);
    }

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.dataSource = dataSource;
    }
}

In addition to the single result query methods, several methods return a list with an entry for each row that the query returned. The most generic method is queryForList(..) which returns a List where each entry is a Map with each entry in the map representing the column value for that row. If you add a method to the above example to retrieve a list of all the rows, it would look like this:

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
    this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

public List<Map<String, Object>> getList() {
    return this.jdbcTemplate.queryForList("select * from mytable");
}

The list returned would look something like this:

[{name=Bob, id=1}, {name=Mary, id=2}]

The following example shows a column updated for a certain primary key. In this example, an SQL statement has placeholders for row parameters. The parameter values can be passed in as varargs or alternatively as an array of objects. Thus primitives should be wrapped in the primitive wrapper classes explicitly or using auto-boxing.

import javax.sql.DataSource;

import org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate;

public class ExecuteAnUpdate {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
    }

    public void setName(int id, String name) {
        this.jdbcTemplate.update("update mytable set name = ? where id = ?", name, id);
    }
}

An update() convenience method supports the retrieval of primary keys generated by the database. This support is part of the JDBC 3.0 standard; see Chapter 13.6 of the specification for details. The method takes a PreparedStatementCreator as its first argument, and this is the way the required insert statement is specified. The other argument is a KeyHolder, which contains the generated key on successful return from the update. There is not a standard single way to create an appropriate PreparedStatement (which explains why the method signature is the way it is). The following example works on Oracle but may not work on other platforms:

final String INSERT_SQL = "insert into my_test (name) values(?)";
final String name = "Rob";

KeyHolder keyHolder = new GeneratedKeyHolder();
jdbcTemplate.update(
    new PreparedStatementCreator() {
        public PreparedStatement createPreparedStatement(Connection connection) throws SQLException {
            PreparedStatement ps = connection.prepareStatement(INSERT_SQL, new String[] {"id"});
            ps.setString(1, name);
            return ps;
        }
    },
    keyHolder);

// keyHolder.getKey() now contains the generated key

Spring obtains a connection to the database through a DataSource. A DataSource is part of the JDBC specification and is a generalized connection factory. It allows a container or a framework to hide connection pooling and transaction management issues from the application code. As a developer, you need not know details about how to connect to the database; that is the responsibility of the administrator that sets up the datasource. You most likely fill both roles as you develop and test code, but you do not necessarily have to know how the production data source is configured.

When using Spring’s JDBC layer, you obtain a data source from JNDI or you configure your own with a connection pool implementation provided by a third party. Popular implementations are Apache Jakarta Commons DBCP and C3P0. Implementations in the Spring distribution are meant only for testing purposes and do not provide pooling.

This section uses Spring’s DriverManagerDataSource implementation, and several additional implementations are covered later.

	Note
	Only use the DriverManagerDataSource class should only be used for testing purposes since it does not provide pooling and will perform poorly when multiple requests for a connection are made.

You obtain a connection with DriverManagerDataSource as you typically obtain a JDBC connection. Specify the fully qualified classname of the JDBC driver so that the DriverManager can load the driver class. Next, provide a URL that varies between JDBC drivers. (Consult the documentation for your driver for the correct value.) Then provide a username and a password to connect to the database. Here is an example of how to configure a DriverManagerDataSource in Java code:

DriverManagerDataSource dataSource = new DriverManagerDataSource();
dataSource.setDriverClassName("org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver");
dataSource.setUrl("jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost:");
dataSource.setUsername("sa");
dataSource.setPassword("");

Here is the corresponding XML configuration:

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
    <property name="driverClassName" value="${jdbc.driverClassName}"/>
    <property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
    <property name="username" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
    <property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
</bean>

<context:property-placeholder location="jdbc.properties"/>

The following examples show the basic connectivity and configuration for DBCP and C3P0. To learn about more options that help control the pooling features, see the product documentation for the respective connection pooling implementations.

DBCP configuration:

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
    <property name="driverClassName" value="${jdbc.driverClassName}"/>
    <property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
    <property name="username" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
    <property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
</bean>

<context:property-placeholder location="jdbc.properties"/>

C3P0 configuration:

<bean id="dataSource" class="com.mchange.v2.c3p0.ComboPooledDataSource" destroy-method="close">
    <property name="driverClass" value="${jdbc.driverClassName}"/>
    <property name="jdbcUrl" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
    <property name="user" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
    <property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
</bean>

<context:property-placeholder location="jdbc.properties"/>

The DataSourceUtils class is a convenient and powerful helper class that provides static methods to obtain connections from JNDI and close connections if necessary. It supports thread-bound connections with, for example, DataSourceTransactionManager.

The SmartDataSource interface should be implemented by classes that can provide a connection to a relational database. It extends the DataSource interface to allow classes using it to query whether the connection should be closed after a given operation. This usage is efficient when you know that you will reuse a connection.

AbstractDataSource is an abstract base class for Spring’s DataSource implementations that implements code that is common to all DataSource implementations. You extend the AbstractDataSource class if you are writing your own DataSource implementation.

The SingleConnectionDataSource class is an implementation of the SmartDataSource interface that wraps a single Connection that is not closed after each use. Obviously, this is not multi-threading capable.

If any client code calls close in the assumption of a pooled connection, as when using persistence tools, set the suppressClose property to true. This setting returns a close-suppressing proxy wrapping the physical connection. Be aware that you will not be able to cast this to a native Oracle Connection or the like anymore.

This is primarily a test class. For example, it enables easy testing of code outside an application server, in conjunction with a simple JNDI environment. In contrast to DriverManagerDataSource, it reuses the same connection all the time, avoiding excessive creation of physical connections.

The DriverManagerDataSource class is an implementation of the standard DataSource interface that configures a plain JDBC driver through bean properties, and returns a new Connection every time.

This implementation is useful for test and stand-alone environments outside of a Java EE container, either as a DataSource bean in a Spring IoC container, or in conjunction with a simple JNDI environment. Pool-assuming Connection.close() calls will simply close the connection, so any DataSource-aware persistence code should work. However, using JavaBean-style connection pools such as commons-dbcp is so easy, even in a test environment, that it is almost always preferable to use such a connection pool over DriverManagerDataSource.

TransactionAwareDataSourceProxy is a proxy for a target DataSource, which wraps that target DataSource to add awareness of Spring-managed transactions. In this respect, it is similar to a transactional JNDI DataSource as provided by a Java EE server.

Note

It is rarely desirable to use this class, except when already existing code that must be called and passed a standard JDBC DataSource interface implementation. In this case, it’s possible to still have this code be usable, and at the same time have this code participating in Spring managed transactions. It is generally preferable to write your own new code using the higher level abstractions for resource management, such as JdbcTemplate or DataSourceUtils.

(See the TransactionAwareDataSourceProxy javadocs for more details.)

The DataSourceTransactionManager class is a PlatformTransactionManager implementation for single JDBC datasources. It binds a JDBC connection from the specified data source to the currently executing thread, potentially allowing for one thread connection per data source.

Application code is required to retrieve the JDBC connection through DataSourceUtils.getConnection(DataSource) instead of Java EE’s standard DataSource.getConnection. It throws unchecked org.springframework.dao exceptions instead of checked SQLExceptions. All framework classes like JdbcTemplate use this strategy implicitly. If not used with this transaction manager, the lookup strategy behaves exactly like the common one - it can thus be used in any case.

The DataSourceTransactionManager class supports custom isolation levels, and timeouts that get applied as appropriate JDBC statement query timeouts. To support the latter, application code must either use JdbcTemplate or call the DataSourceUtils.applyTransactionTimeout(..) method for each created statement.

This implementation can be used instead of JtaTransactionManager in the single resource case, as it does not require the container to support JTA. Switching between both is just a matter of configuration, if you stick to the required connection lookup pattern. JTA does not support custom isolation levels!

Sometimes you need to access vendor specific JDBC methods that differ from the standard JDBC API. This can be problematic if you are running in an application server or with a DataSource that wraps the Connection, Statement and ResultSet objects with its own wrapper objects. To gain access to the native objects you can configure your JdbcTemplate or OracleLobHandler with a NativeJdbcExtractor.

The NativeJdbcExtractor comes in a variety of flavors to match your execution environment:

Usually the SimpleNativeJdbcExtractor is sufficient for unwrapping a Connection object in most environments. See the javadocs for more details.

You accomplish JdbcTemplate batch processing by implementing two methods of a special interface, BatchPreparedStatementSetter, and passing that in as the second parameter in your batchUpdate method call. Use the getBatchSize method to provide the size of the current batch. Use the setValues method to set the values for the parameters of the prepared statement. This method will be called the number of times that you specified in the getBatchSize call. The following example updates the actor table based on entries in a list. The entire list is used as the batch in this example:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {
    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
    }

    public int[] batchUpdate(final List<Actor> actors) {
        int[] updateCounts = jdbcTemplate.batchUpdate("update t_actor set first_name = ?, " +
                "last_name = ? where id = ?",
            new BatchPreparedStatementSetter() {
                public void setValues(PreparedStatement ps, int i) throws SQLException {
                        ps.setString(1, actors.get(i).getFirstName());
                        ps.setString(2, actors.get(i).getLastName());
                        ps.setLong(3, actors.get(i).getId().longValue());
                    }

                    public int getBatchSize() {
                        return actors.size();
                    }
                });
        return updateCounts;
    }

    // ... additional methods
}

If you are processing a stream of updates or reading from a file, then you might have a preferred batch size, but the last batch might not have that number of entries. In this case you can use the InterruptibleBatchPreparedStatementSetter interface, which allows you to interrupt a batch once the input source is exhausted. The isBatchExhausted method allows you to signal the end of the batch.

Both the JdbcTemplate and the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate provides an alternate way of providing the batch update. Instead of implementing a special batch interface, you provide all parameter values in the call as a list. The framework loops over these values and uses an internal prepared statement setter. The API varies depending on whether you use named parameters. For the named parameters you provide an array of SqlParameterSource, one entry for each member of the batch. You can use the SqlParameterSource.createBatch method to create this array, passing in either an array of JavaBeans or an array of Maps containing the parameter values.

This example shows a batch update using named parameters:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {
    private NamedParameterTemplate namedParameterJdbcTemplate;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate = new NamedParameterJdbcTemplate(dataSource);
    }

    public int[] batchUpdate(final List<Actor> actors) {
        SqlParameterSource[] batch = SqlParameterSourceUtils.createBatch(actors.toArray());
        int[] updateCounts = namedParameterJdbcTemplate.batchUpdate(
                "update t_actor set first_name = :firstName, last_name = :lastName where id = :id",
                batch);
        return updateCounts;
    }

    // ... additional methods
}

For an SQL statement using the classic "?" placeholders, you pass in a list containing an object array with the update values. This object array must have one entry for each placeholder in the SQL statement, and they must be in the same order as they are defined in the SQL statement.

The same example using classic JDBC "?" placeholders:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
    }

    public int[] batchUpdate(final List<Actor> actors) {
        List<Object[]> batch = new ArrayList<Object[]>();
        for (Actor actor : actors) {
            Object[] values = new Object[] {
                    actor.getFirstName(),
                    actor.getLastName(),
                    actor.getId()};
            batch.add(values);
        }
        int[] updateCounts = jdbcTemplate.batchUpdate(
                "update t_actor set first_name = ?, last_name = ? where id = ?",
                batch);
        return updateCounts;
    }

    // ... additional methods

}

All of the above batch update methods return an int array containing the number of affected rows for each batch entry. This count is reported by the JDBC driver. If the count is not available, the JDBC driver returns a -2 value.

The last example of a batch update deals with batches that are so large that you want to break them up into several smaller batches. You can of course do this with the methods mentioned above by making multiple calls to the batchUpdate method, but there is now a more convenient method. This method takes, in addition to the SQL statement, a Collection of objects containing the parameters, the number of updates to make for each batch and a ParameterizedPreparedStatementSetter to set the values for the parameters of the prepared statement. The framework loops over the provided values and breaks the update calls into batches of the size specified.

This example shows a batch update using a batch size of 100:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
    }

    public int[][] batchUpdate(final Collection<Actor> actors) {
        int[][] updateCounts = jdbcTemplate.batchUpdate(
                "update t_actor set first_name = ?, last_name = ? where id = ?",
                actors,
                100,
                new ParameterizedPreparedStatementSetter<Actor>() {
                    public void setValues(PreparedStatement ps, Actor argument) throws SQLException {
                        ps.setString(1, argument.getFirstName());
                        ps.setString(2, argument.getLastName());
                        ps.setLong(3, argument.getId().longValue());
                    }
                });
        return updateCounts;
    }

    // ... additional methods

}

The batch update methods for this call returns an array of int arrays containing an array entry for each batch with an array of the number of affected rows for each update. The top level array’s length indicates the number of batches executed and the second level array’s length indicates the number of updates in that batch. The number of updates in each batch should be the the batch size provided for all batches except for the last one that might be less, depending on the total number of update objects provided. The update count for each update statement is the one reported by the JDBC driver. If the count is not available, the JDBC driver returns a -2 value.

Let’s start by looking at the SimpleJdbcInsert class with the minimal amount of configuration options. You should instantiate the SimpleJdbcInsert in the data access layer’s initialization method. For this example, the initializing method is the setDataSource method. You do not need to subclass the SimpleJdbcInsert class; simply create a new instance and set the table name using the withTableName method. Configuration methods for this class follow the "fluid" style that returns the instance of the SimpleJdbcInsert, which allows you to chain all configuration methods. This example uses only one configuration method; you will see examples of multiple ones later.

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;
    private SimpleJdbcInsert insertActor;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
        this.insertActor = new SimpleJdbcInsert(dataSource).withTableName("t_actor");
    }

    public void add(Actor actor) {
        Map<String, Object> parameters = new HashMap<String, Object>(3);
        parameters.put("id", actor.getId());
        parameters.put("first_name", actor.getFirstName());
        parameters.put("last_name", actor.getLastName());
        insertActor.execute(parameters);
    }

    // ... additional methods
}

The execute method used here takes a plain java.utils.Map as its only parameter. The important thing to note here is that the keys used for the Map must match the column names of the table as defined in the database. This is because we read the metadata in order to construct the actual insert statement.

This example uses the same insert as the preceding, but instead of passing in the id it retrieves the auto-generated key and sets it on the new Actor object. When you create the SimpleJdbcInsert, in addition to specifying the table name, you specify the name of the generated key column with the usingGeneratedKeyColumns method.

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;
    private SimpleJdbcInsert insertActor;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
        this.insertActor = new SimpleJdbcInsert(dataSource)
                .withTableName("t_actor")
                .usingGeneratedKeyColumns("id");
    }

    public void add(Actor actor) {
        Map<String, Object> parameters = new HashMap<String, Object>(2);
        parameters.put("first_name", actor.getFirstName());
        parameters.put("last_name", actor.getLastName());
        Number newId = insertActor.executeAndReturnKey(parameters);
        actor.setId(newId.longValue());
    }

    // ... additional methods
}

The main difference when executing the insert by this second approach is that you do not add the id to the Map and you call the executeAndReturnKey method. This returns a java.lang.Number object with which you can create an instance of the numerical type that is used in our domain class. You cannot rely on all databases to return a specific Java class here; java.lang.Number is the base class that you can rely on. If you have multiple auto-generated columns, or the generated values are non-numeric, then you can use a KeyHolder that is returned from the executeAndReturnKeyHolder method.

You can limit the columns for an insert by specifying a list of column names with the usingColumns method:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;
    private SimpleJdbcInsert insertActor;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
        this.insertActor = new SimpleJdbcInsert(dataSource)
                .withTableName("t_actor")
                .usingColumns("first_name", "last_name")
                .usingGeneratedKeyColumns("id");
    }

    public void add(Actor actor) {
        Map<String, Object> parameters = new HashMap<String, Object>(2);
        parameters.put("first_name", actor.getFirstName());
        parameters.put("last_name", actor.getLastName());
        Number newId = insertActor.executeAndReturnKey(parameters);
        actor.setId(newId.longValue());
    }

    // ... additional methods

}

The execution of the insert is the same as if you had relied on the metadata to determine which columns to use.

Using a Map to provide parameter values works fine, but it’s not the most convenient class to use. Spring provides a couple of implementations of the SqlParameterSource interface that can be used instead.The first one is BeanPropertySqlParameterSource, which is a very convenient class if you have a JavaBean-compliant class that contains your values. It will use the corresponding getter method to extract the parameter values. Here is an example:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;
    private SimpleJdbcInsert insertActor;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
        this.insertActor = new SimpleJdbcInsert(dataSource)
                .withTableName("t_actor")
                .usingGeneratedKeyColumns("id");
    }

    public void add(Actor actor) {
        SqlParameterSource parameters = new BeanPropertySqlParameterSource(actor);
        Number newId = insertActor.executeAndReturnKey(parameters);
        actor.setId(newId.longValue());
    }

    // ... additional methods

}

Another option is the MapSqlParameterSource that resembles a Map but provides a more convenient addValue method that can be chained.

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;
    private SimpleJdbcInsert insertActor;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
        this.insertActor = new SimpleJdbcInsert(dataSource)
                .withTableName("t_actor")
                .usingGeneratedKeyColumns("id");
    }

    public void add(Actor actor) {
        SqlParameterSource parameters = new MapSqlParameterSource()
                .addValue("first_name", actor.getFirstName())
                .addValue("last_name", actor.getLastName());
        Number newId = insertActor.executeAndReturnKey(parameters);
        actor.setId(newId.longValue());
    }

    // ... additional methods

}

As you can see, the configuration is the same; only the executing code has to change to use these alternative input classes.

The SimpleJdbcCall class leverages metadata in the database to look up names of in and out parameters, so that you do not have to declare them explicitly. You can declare parameters if you prefer to do that, or if you have parameters such as ARRAY or STRUCT that do not have an automatic mapping to a Java class. The first example shows a simple procedure that returns only scalar values in VARCHAR and DATE format from a MySQL database. The example procedure reads a specified actor entry and returns first_name, last_name, and birth_date columns in the form of out parameters.

CREATE PROCEDURE read_actor (
    IN in_id INTEGER,
    OUT out_first_name VARCHAR(100),
    OUT out_last_name VARCHAR(100),
    OUT out_birth_date DATE)
BEGIN
    SELECT first_name, last_name, birth_date
    INTO out_first_name, out_last_name, out_birth_date
    FROM t_actor where id = in_id;
END;

The in_id parameter contains the id of the actor you are looking up. The out parameters return the data read from the table.

The SimpleJdbcCall is declared in a similar manner to the SimpleJdbcInsert. You should instantiate and configure the class in the initialization method of your data access layer. Compared to the StoredProcedure class, you don’t have to create a subclass and you don’t have to declare parameters that can be looked up in the database metadata. Following is an example of a SimpleJdbcCall configuration using the above stored procedure. The only configuration option, in addition to the DataSource, is the name of the stored procedure.

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;
    private SimpleJdbcCall procReadActor;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
        this.procReadActor = new SimpleJdbcCall(dataSource)
                .withProcedureName("read_actor");
    }

    public Actor readActor(Long id) {
        SqlParameterSource in = new MapSqlParameterSource()
                .addValue("in_id", id);
        Map out = procReadActor.execute(in);
        Actor actor = new Actor();
        actor.setId(id);
        actor.setFirstName((String) out.get("out_first_name"));
        actor.setLastName((String) out.get("out_last_name"));
        actor.setBirthDate((Date) out.get("out_birth_date"));
        return actor;
    }

    // ... additional methods

}

The code you write for the execution of the call involves creating an SqlParameterSource containing the IN parameter. It’s important to match the name provided for the input value with that of the parameter name declared in the stored procedure. The case does not have to match because you use metadata to determine how database objects should be referred to in a stored procedure. What is specified in the source for the stored procedure is not necessarily the way it is stored in the database. Some databases transform names to all upper case while others use lower case or use the case as specified.

The execute method takes the IN parameters and returns a Map containing any out parameters keyed by the name as specified in the stored procedure. In this case they are out_first_name, out_last_name and out_birth_date.

The last part of the execute method creates an Actor instance to use to return the data retrieved. Again, it is important to use the names of the out parameters as they are declared in the stored procedure. Also, the case in the names of the out parameters stored in the results map matches that of the out parameter names in the database, which could vary between databases. To make your code more portable you should do a case-insensitive lookup or instruct Spring to use a LinkedCaseInsensitiveMap. To do the latter, you create your own JdbcTemplate and set the setResultsMapCaseInsensitive property to true. Then you pass this customized JdbcTemplate instance into the constructor of your SimpleJdbcCall. Here is an example of this configuration:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

    private SimpleJdbcCall procReadActor;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
        jdbcTemplate.setResultsMapCaseInsensitive(true);
        this.procReadActor = new SimpleJdbcCall(jdbcTemplate)
                .withProcedureName("read_actor");
    }

    // ... additional methods

}

By taking this action, you avoid conflicts in the case used for the names of your returned out parameters.

You have seen how the parameters are deduced based on metadata, but you can declare then explicitly if you wish. You do this by creating and configuring SimpleJdbcCall with the declareParameters method, which takes a variable number of SqlParameter objects as input. See the next section for details on how to define an SqlParameter.

	Note
	Explicit declarations are necessary if the database you use is not a Spring-supported database. Currently Spring supports metadata lookup of stored procedure calls for the following databases: Apache Derby, DB2, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and Sybase. We also support metadata lookup of stored functions for MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle.

You can opt to declare one, some, or all the parameters explicitly. The parameter metadata is still used where you do not declare parameters explicitly. To bypass all processing of metadata lookups for potential parameters and only use the declared parameters, you call the method withoutProcedureColumnMetaDataAccess as part of the declaration. Suppose that you have two or more different call signatures declared for a database function. In this case you call the useInParameterNames to specify the list of IN parameter names to include for a given signature.

The following example shows a fully declared procedure call, using the information from the preceding example.

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

    private SimpleJdbcCall procReadActor;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
        jdbcTemplate.setResultsMapCaseInsensitive(true);
        this.procReadActor = new SimpleJdbcCall(jdbcTemplate)
                .withProcedureName("read_actor")
                .withoutProcedureColumnMetaDataAccess()
                .useInParameterNames("in_id")
                .declareParameters(
                        new SqlParameter("in_id", Types.NUMERIC),
                        new SqlOutParameter("out_first_name", Types.VARCHAR),
                        new SqlOutParameter("out_last_name", Types.VARCHAR),
                        new SqlOutParameter("out_birth_date", Types.DATE)
                );
    }

    // ... additional methods
}

The execution and end results of the two examples are the same; this one specifies all details explicitly rather than relying on metadata.

To define a parameter for the SimpleJdbc classes and also for the RDBMS operations classes, covered in Section 18.6, “Modeling JDBC operations as Java objects”, you use an SqlParameter or one of its subclasses. You typically specify the parameter name and SQL type in the constructor. The SQL type is specified using the java.sql.Types constants. We have already seen declarations like:

new SqlParameter("in_id", Types.NUMERIC),
    new SqlOutParameter("out_first_name", Types.VARCHAR),

The first line with the SqlParameter declares an IN parameter. IN parameters can be used for both stored procedure calls and for queries using the SqlQuery and its subclasses covered in the following section.

The second line with the SqlOutParameter declares an out parameter to be used in a stored procedure call. There is also an SqlInOutParameter for InOut parameters, parameters that provide an IN value to the procedure and that also return a value.

	Note
	Only parameters declared as SqlParameter and SqlInOutParameter will be used to provide input values. This is different from the StoredProcedure class, which for backwards compatibility reasons allows input values to be provided for parameters declared as SqlOutParameter.

For IN parameters, in addition to the name and the SQL type, you can specify a scale for numeric data or a type name for custom database types. For out parameters, you can provide a RowMapper to handle mapping of rows returned from a REF cursor. Another option is to specify an SqlReturnType that provides an opportunity to define customized handling of the return values.

You call a stored function in almost the same way as you call a stored procedure, except that you provide a function name rather than a procedure name. You use the withFunctionName method as part of the configuration to indicate that we want to make a call to a function, and the corresponding string for a function call is generated. A specialized execute call, executeFunction, is used to execute the function and it returns the function return value as an object of a specified type, which means you do not have to retrieve the return value from the results map. A similar convenience method named executeObject is also available for stored procedures that only have one out parameter. The following example is based on a stored function named get_actor_name that returns an actor’s full name. Here is the MySQL source for this function:

CREATE FUNCTION get_actor_name (in_id INTEGER)
RETURNS VARCHAR(200) READS SQL DATA
BEGIN
    DECLARE out_name VARCHAR(200);
    SELECT concat(first_name, ' ', last_name)
        INTO out_name
        FROM t_actor where id = in_id;
    RETURN out_name;
END;

To call this function we again create a SimpleJdbcCall in the initialization method.

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;
    private SimpleJdbcCall funcGetActorName;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
        JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
        jdbcTemplate.setResultsMapCaseInsensitive(true);
        this.funcGetActorName = new SimpleJdbcCall(jdbcTemplate)
                .withFunctionName("get_actor_name");
    }

    public String getActorName(Long id) {
        SqlParameterSource in = new MapSqlParameterSource()
                .addValue("in_id", id);
        String name = funcGetActorName.executeFunction(String.class, in);
        return name;
    }

    // ... additional methods

}

The execute method used returns a String containing the return value from the function call.

Calling a stored procedure or function that returns a result set is a bit tricky. Some databases return result sets during the JDBC results processing while others require an explicitly registered out parameter of a specific type. Both approaches need additional processing to loop over the result set and process the returned rows. With the SimpleJdbcCall you use the returningResultSet method and declare a RowMapper implementation to be used for a specific parameter. In the case where the result set is returned during the results processing, there are no names defined, so the returned results will have to match the order in which you declare the RowMapper implementations. The name specified is still used to store the processed list of results in the results map that is returned from the execute statement.

The next example uses a stored procedure that takes no IN parameters and returns all rows from the t_actor table. Here is the MySQL source for this procedure:

CREATE PROCEDURE read_all_actors()
BEGIN
 SELECT a.id, a.first_name, a.last_name, a.birth_date FROM t_actor a;
END;

To call this procedure you declare the RowMapper. Because the class you want to map to follows the JavaBean rules, you can use a BeanPropertyRowMapper that is created by passing in the required class to map to in the newInstance method.

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

    private SimpleJdbcCall procReadAllActors;

    public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
        JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
        jdbcTemplate.setResultsMapCaseInsensitive(true);
        this.procReadAllActors = new SimpleJdbcCall(jdbcTemplate)
                .withProcedureName("read_all_actors")
                .returningResultSet("actors",
                BeanPropertyRowMapper.newInstance(Actor.class));
    }

    public List getActorsList() {
        Map m = procReadAllActors.execute(new HashMap<String, Object>(0));
        return (List) m.get("actors");
    }

    // ... additional methods

}

The execute call passes in an empty Map because this call does not take any parameters. The list of Actors is then retrieved from the results map and returned to the caller.

SqlQuery is a reusable, threadsafe class that encapsulates an SQL query. Subclasses must implement the newRowMapper(..) method to provide a RowMapper instance that can create one object per row obtained from iterating over the ResultSet that is created during the execution of the query. The SqlQuery class is rarely used directly because the MappingSqlQuery subclass provides a much more convenient implementation for mapping rows to Java classes. Other implementations that extend SqlQuery are MappingSqlQueryWithParameters and UpdatableSqlQuery.

MappingSqlQuery is a reusable query in which concrete subclasses must implement the abstract mapRow(..) method to convert each row of the supplied ResultSet into an object of the type specified. The following example shows a custom query that maps the data from the t_actor relation to an instance of the Actor class.

public class ActorMappingQuery extends MappingSqlQuery<Actor> {

    public ActorMappingQuery(DataSource ds) {
        super(ds, "select id, first_name, last_name from t_actor where id = ?");
        super.declareParameter(new SqlParameter("id", Types.INTEGER));
        compile();
    }

    @Override
    protected Actor mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNumber) throws SQLException {
        Actor actor = new Actor();
        actor.setId(rs.getLong("id"));
        actor.setFirstName(rs.getString("first_name"));
        actor.setLastName(rs.getString("last_name"));
        return actor;
    }

}

The class extends MappingSqlQuery parameterized with the Actor type. The constructor for this customer query takes the DataSource as the only parameter. In this constructor you call the constructor on the superclass with the DataSource and the SQL that should be executed to retrieve the rows for this query. This SQL will be used to create a PreparedStatement so it may contain place holders for any parameters to be passed in during execution.You must declare each parameter using the declareParameter method passing in an SqlParameter. The SqlParameter takes a name and the JDBC type as defined in java.sql.Types. After you define all parameters, you call the compile() method so the statement can be prepared and later executed. This class is thread-safe after it is compiled, so as long as these instances are created when the DAO is initialized they can be kept as instance variables and be reused.

private ActorMappingQuery actorMappingQuery;

@Autowired
public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
    this.actorMappingQuery = new ActorMappingQuery(dataSource);
}

public Customer getCustomer(Long id) {
    return actorMappingQuery.findObject(id);
}

The method in this example retrieves the customer with the id that is passed in as the only parameter. Since we only want one object returned we simply call the convenience method findObject with the id as parameter. If we had instead a query that returned a list of objects and took additional parameters then we would use one of the execute methods that takes an array of parameter values passed in as varargs.

public List<Actor> searchForActors(int age, String namePattern) {
    List<Actor> actors = actorSearchMappingQuery.execute(age, namePattern);
    return actors;
}

The SqlUpdate class encapsulates an SQL update. Like a query, an update object is reusable, and like all RdbmsOperation classes, an update can have parameters and is defined in SQL. This class provides a number of update(..) methods analogous to the execute(..) methods of query objects. The SQLUpdate class is concrete. It can be subclassed, for example, to add a custom update method, as in the following snippet where it’s simply called execute. However, you don’t have to subclass the SqlUpdate class since it can easily be parameterized by setting SQL and declaring parameters.

import java.sql.Types;

import javax.sql.DataSource;

import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.SqlUpdate;

public class UpdateCreditRating extends SqlUpdate {

    public UpdateCreditRating(DataSource ds) {
        setDataSource(ds);
        setSql("update customer set credit_rating = ? where id = ?");
        declareParameter(new SqlParameter("creditRating", Types.NUMERIC));
        declareParameter(new SqlParameter("id", Types.NUMERIC));
        compile();
    }

    /**
     * @param id for the Customer to be updated
     * @param rating the new value for credit rating
     * @return number of rows updated
     */
    public int execute(int id, int rating) {
        return update(rating, id);
    }
}

The StoredProcedure class is a superclass for object abstractions of RDBMS stored procedures. This class is abstract, and its various execute(..) methods have protected access, preventing use other than through a subclass that offers tighter typing.

The inherited sql property will be the name of the stored procedure in the RDBMS.

To define a parameter for the StoredProcedure class, you use an SqlParameter or one of its subclasses. You must specify the parameter name and SQL type in the constructor like in the following code snippet. The SQL type is specified using the java.sql.Types constants.

new SqlParameter("in_id", Types.NUMERIC),
    new SqlOutParameter("out_first_name", Types.VARCHAR),

The first line with the SqlParameter declares an IN parameter. IN parameters can be used for both stored procedure calls and for queries using the SqlQuery and its subclasses covered in the following section.

The second line with the SqlOutParameter declares an out parameter to be used in the stored procedure call. There is also an SqlInOutParameter for I nOut parameters, parameters that provide an in value to the procedure and that also return a value.

For i n parameters, in addition to the name and the SQL type, you can specify a scale for numeric data or a type name for custom database types. For out parameters you can provide a RowMapper to handle mapping of rows returned from a REF cursor. Another option is to specify an SqlReturnType that enables you to define customized handling of the return values.

Here is an example of a simple DAO that uses a StoredProcedure to call a function, sysdate(),which comes with any Oracle database. To use the stored procedure functionality you have to create a class that extends StoredProcedure. In this example, the StoredProcedure class is an inner class, but if you need to reuse the StoredProcedure you declare it as a top-level class. This example has no input parameters, but an output parameter is declared as a date type using the class SqlOutParameter. The execute() method executes the procedure and extracts the returned date from the results Map. The results Map has an entry for each declared output parameter, in this case only one, using the parameter name as the key.

import java.sql.Types;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

import javax.sql.DataSource;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlOutParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.StoredProcedure;

public class StoredProcedureDao {

    private GetSysdateProcedure getSysdate;

    @Autowired
    public void init(DataSource dataSource) {
        this.getSysdate = new GetSysdateProcedure(dataSource);
    }

    public Date getSysdate() {
        return getSysdate.execute();
    }

    private class GetSysdateProcedure extends StoredProcedure {

        private static final String SQL = "sysdate";

        public GetSysdateProcedure(DataSource dataSource) {
            setDataSource(dataSource);
            setFunction(true);
            setSql(SQL);
            declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("date", Types.DATE));
            compile();
        }

        public Date execute() {
            // the 'sysdate' sproc has no input parameters, so an empty Map is supplied...
            Map<String, Object> results = execute(new HashMap<String, Object>());
            Date sysdate = (Date) results.get("date");
            return sysdate;
        }
    }

}

The following example of a StoredProcedure has two output parameters (in this case, Oracle REF cursors).

import oracle.jdbc.OracleTypes;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlOutParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.StoredProcedure;

import javax.sql.DataSource;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

public class TitlesAndGenresStoredProcedure extends StoredProcedure {

    private static final String SPROC_NAME = "AllTitlesAndGenres";

    public TitlesAndGenresStoredProcedure(DataSource dataSource) {
        super(dataSource, SPROC_NAME);
        declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("titles", OracleTypes.CURSOR, new TitleMapper()));
        declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("genres", OracleTypes.CURSOR, new GenreMapper()));
        compile();
    }

    public Map<String, Object> execute() {
        // again, this sproc has no input parameters, so an empty Map is supplied
        return super.execute(new HashMap<String, Object>());
    }
}

Notice how the overloaded variants of the declareParameter(..) method that have been used in the TitlesAndGenresStoredProcedure constructor are passed RowMapper implementation instances; this is a very convenient and powerful way to reuse existing functionality. The code for the two RowMapper implementations is provided below.

The TitleMapper class maps a ResultSet to a Title domain object for each row in the supplied ResultSet:

import org.springframework.jdbc.core.RowMapper;

import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.SQLException;

import com.foo.domain.Title;

public final class TitleMapper implements RowMapper<Title> {

    public Title mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException {
        Title title = new Title();
        title.setId(rs.getLong("id"));
        title.setName(rs.getString("name"));
        return title;
    }
}

The GenreMapper class maps a ResultSet to a Genre domain object for each row in the supplied ResultSet.

import org.springframework.jdbc.core.RowMapper;

import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.SQLException;

import com.foo.domain.Genre;

public final class GenreMapper implements RowMapper<Genre> {

    public Genre mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException {
        return new Genre(rs.getString("name"));
    }
}

To pass parameters to a stored procedure that has one or more input parameters in its definition in the RDBMS, you can code a strongly typed execute(..) method that would delegate to the superclass' untyped execute(Map parameters) method (which has protected access); for example:

import oracle.jdbc.OracleTypes;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlOutParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.StoredProcedure;

import javax.sql.DataSource;

import java.sql.Types;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

public class TitlesAfterDateStoredProcedure extends StoredProcedure {

    private static final String SPROC_NAME = "TitlesAfterDate";
    private static final String CUTOFF_DATE_PARAM = "cutoffDate";

    public TitlesAfterDateStoredProcedure(DataSource dataSource) {
        super(dataSource, SPROC_NAME);
        declareParameter(new SqlParameter(CUTOFF_DATE_PARAM, Types.DATE);
        declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("titles", OracleTypes.CURSOR, new TitleMapper()));
        compile();
    }

    public Map<String, Object> execute(Date cutoffDate) {
        Map<String, Object> inputs = new HashMap<String, Object>();
        inputs.put(CUTOFF_DATE_PARAM, cutoffDate);
        return super.execute(inputs);
    }
}

Usually Spring determines the SQL type of the parameters based on the type of parameter passed in. It is possible to explicitly provide the SQL type to be used when setting parameter values. This is sometimes necessary to correctly set NULL values.

You can provide SQL type information in several ways:

You can store images, other binary data, and large chunks of text in the database. These large objects are called BLOBs (Binary Large OBject) for binary data and CLOBs (Character Large OBject) for character data. In Spring you can handle these large objects by using the JdbcTemplate directly and also when using the higher abstractions provided by RDBMS Objects and the SimpleJdbc classes. All of these approaches use an implementation of the LobHandler interface for the actual management of the LOB (Large OBject) data. The LobHandler provides access to a LobCreator class, through the getLobCreator method, used for creating new LOB objects to be inserted.

The LobCreator/LobHandler provides the following support for LOB input and output:

The next example shows how to create and insert a BLOB. Later you will see how to read it back from the database.

This example uses a JdbcTemplate and an implementation of the AbstractLobCreatingPreparedStatementCallback. It implements one method, setValues. This method provides a LobCreator that you use to set the values for the LOB columns in your SQL insert statement.

For this example we assume that there is a variable, lobHandler, that already is set to an instance of a DefaultLobHandler. You typically set this value through dependency injection.

final File blobIn = new File("spring2004.jpg");
final InputStream blobIs = new FileInputStream(blobIn);
final File clobIn = new File("large.txt");
final InputStream clobIs = new FileInputStream(clobIn);
final InputStreamReader clobReader = new InputStreamReader(clobIs);
jdbcTemplate.execute(
    "INSERT INTO lob_table (id, a_clob, a_blob) VALUES (?, ?, ?)",
    new AbstractLobCreatingPreparedStatementCallback(lobHandler) { 
        protected void setValues(PreparedStatement ps, LobCreator lobCreator) throws SQLException {
            ps.setLong(1, 1L);
            lobCreator.setClobAsCharacterStream(ps, 2, clobReader, (int)clobIn.length()); 
            lobCreator.setBlobAsBinaryStream(ps, 3, blobIs, (int)blobIn.length()); 
        }
    }
);
blobIs.close();
clobReader.close();

Note

If you invoke the setBlobAsBinaryStream, setClobAsAsciiStream, or setClobAsCharacterStream method on the LobCreator returned from DefaultLobHandler.getLobCreator(), you can optionally specify a negative value for the contentLength argument. If the specified content length is negative, the DefaultLobHandler will use the JDBC 4.0 variants of the set-stream methods without a length parameter; otherwise, it will pass the specified length on to the driver. Consult the documentation for the JDBC driver in use to verify support for streaming a LOB without providing the content length.

Now it’s time to read the LOB data from the database. Again, you use a JdbcTemplate with the same instance variable lobHandler and a reference to a DefaultLobHandler.

List<Map<String, Object>> l = jdbcTemplate.query("select id, a_clob, a_blob from lob_table",
    new RowMapper<Map<String, Object>>() {
        public Map<String, Object> mapRow(ResultSet rs, int i) throws SQLException {
            Map<String, Object> results = new HashMap<String, Object>();
            String clobText = lobHandler.getClobAsString(rs, "a_clob"); 
results.put("CLOB", clobText); byte[] blobBytes = lobHandler.getBlobAsBytes(rs, "a_blob"); 
results.put("BLOB", blobBytes); return results; } });

The SQL standard allows for selecting rows based on an expression that includes a variable list of values. A typical example would be select * from T_ACTOR where id in (1, 2, 3). This variable list is not directly supported for prepared statements by the JDBC standard; you cannot declare a variable number of placeholders. You need a number of variations with the desired number of placeholders prepared, or you need to generate the SQL string dynamically once you know how many placeholders are required. The named parameter support provided in the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate and JdbcTemplate takes the latter approach. Pass in the values as a java.util.List of primitive objects. This list will be used to insert the required placeholders and pass in the values during the statement execution.

	Note
	Be careful when passing in many values. The JDBC standard does not guarantee that you can use more than 100 values for an in expression list. Various databases exceed this number, but they usually have a hard limit for how many values are allowed. Oracle’s limit is 1000.

In addition to the primitive values in the value list, you can create a java.util.List of object arrays. This list would support multiple expressions defined for the in clause such as select * from T_ACTOR where (id, last_name) in 1, 'Johnson'), (2, 'Harrop'. This of course requires that your database supports this syntax.

When you call stored procedures you can sometimes use complex types specific to the database. To accommodate these types, Spring provides a SqlReturnType for handling them when they are returned from the stored procedure call and SqlTypeValue when they are passed in as a parameter to the stored procedure.

Here is an example of returning the value of an Oracle STRUCT object of the user declared type ITEM_TYPE. The SqlReturnType interface has a single method named getTypeValue that must be implemented. This interface is used as part of the declaration of an SqlOutParameter.

final TestItem = new TestItem(123L, "A test item",
        new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-M-d").parse("2010-12-31"));

declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("item", OracleTypes.STRUCT, "ITEM_TYPE",
    new SqlReturnType() {
        public Object getTypeValue(CallableStatement cs, int colIndx, int sqlType, String typeName) throws SQLException {
            STRUCT struct = (STRUCT) cs.getObject(colIndx);
            Object[] attr = struct.getAttributes();
            TestItem item = new TestItem();
            item.setId(((Number) attr[0]).longValue());
            item.setDescription((String) attr[1]);
            item.setExpirationDate((java.util.Date) attr[2]);
            return item;
        }
    }));

You use the SqlTypeValue to pass in the value of a Java object like TestItem into a stored procedure. The SqlTypeValue interface has a single method named createTypeValue that you must implement. The active connection is passed in, and you can use it to create database-specific objects such as StructDescriptors, as shown in the following example, or ArrayDescriptors.

final TestItem = new TestItem(123L, "A test item",
        new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-M-d").parse("2010-12-31"));

SqlTypeValue value = new AbstractSqlTypeValue() {
    protected Object createTypeValue(Connection conn, int sqlType, String typeName) throws SQLException {
        StructDescriptor itemDescriptor = new StructDescriptor(typeName, conn);
        Struct item = new STRUCT(itemDescriptor, conn,
        new Object[] {
            testItem.getId(),
            testItem.getDescription(),
            new java.sql.Date(testItem.getExpirationDate().getTime())
        });
        return item;
    }
};

This SqlTypeValue can now be added to the Map containing the input parameters for the execute call of the stored procedure.

Another use for the SqlTypeValue is passing in an array of values to an Oracle stored procedure. Oracle has its own internal ARRAY class that must be used in this case, and you can use the SqlTypeValue to create an instance of the Oracle ARRAY and populate it with values from the Java ARRAY.

final Long[] ids = new Long[] {1L, 2L};

SqlTypeValue value = new AbstractSqlTypeValue() {
    protected Object createTypeValue(Connection conn, int sqlType, String typeName) throws SQLException {
        ArrayDescriptor arrayDescriptor = new ArrayDescriptor(typeName, conn);
        ARRAY idArray = new ARRAY(arrayDescriptor, conn, ids);
        return idArray;
    }
};

An embedded database is useful during the development phase of a project because of its lightweight nature. Benefits include ease of configuration, quick startup time, testability, and the ability to rapidly evolve SQL during development.

If you want to expose an embedded database instance as a bean in a Spring ApplicationContext, use the embedded-database tag in the spring-jdbc namespace:

<jdbc:embedded-database id="dataSource" generate-name="true">
    <jdbc:script location="classpath:schema.sql"/>
    <jdbc:script location="classpath:test-data.sql"/>
</jdbc:embedded-database>

The preceding configuration creates an embedded HSQL database populated with SQL from schema.sql and test-data.sql resources in the root of the classpath. In addition, as a best practice, the embedded database will be assigned a uniquely generated name. The embedded database is made available to the Spring container as a bean of type javax.sql.DataSource which can then be injected into data access objects as needed.

The EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder class provides a fluent API for constructing an embedded database programmatically. Use this when you need to create an embedded database in a standalone environment or in a standalone integration test like in the following example.

EmbeddedDatabase db = new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
    .generateUniqueName(true)
    .setType(H2)
    .setScriptEncoding("UTF-8")
    .ignoreFailedDrops(true)
    .addScript("schema.sql")
    .addScripts("user_data.sql", "country_data.sql")
    .build();

// perform actions against the db (EmbeddedDatabase extends javax.sql.DataSource)

db.shutdown()

Consult the Javadoc for EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder for further details on all supported options.

The EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder can also be used to create an embedded database using Java Config like in the following example.

@Configuration
public class DataSourceConfig {

    @Bean
    public DataSource dataSource() {
        return new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
            .generateUniqueName(true)
            .setType(H2)
            .setScriptEncoding("UTF-8")
            .ignoreFailedDrops(true)
            .addScript("schema.sql")
            .addScripts("user_data.sql", "country_data.sql")
            .build();
    }
}

Embedded databases provide a lightweight way to test data access code. The following is a data access integration test template that uses an embedded database. Using a template like this can be useful for one-offs when the embedded database does not need to be reused across test classes. However, if you wish to create an embedded database that is shared within a test suite, consider using the Spring TestContext Framework and configuring the embedded database as a bean in the Spring ApplicationContext as described in Section 18.8.2, “Creating an embedded database using Spring XML” and Section 18.8.3, “Creating an embedded database programmatically”.

public class DataAccessIntegrationTestTemplate {

    private EmbeddedDatabase db;

    @Before
    public void setUp() {
        // creates an HSQL in-memory database populated from default scripts
        // classpath:schema.sql and classpath:data.sql
        db = new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
                .generateUniqueName(true)
                .addDefaultScripts()
                .build();
    }

    @Test
    public void testDataAccess() {
        JdbcTemplate template = new JdbcTemplate(db);
        template.query( /* ... */ );
    }

    @After
    public void tearDown() {
        db.shutdown();
    }

}

Development teams often encounter errors with embedded databases if their test suite inadvertently attempts to recreate additional instances of the same database. This can happen quite easily if an XML configuration file or @Configuration class is responsible for creating an embedded database and the corresponding configuration is then reused across multiple testing scenarios within the same test suite (i.e., within the same JVM process) –- for example, integration tests against embedded databases whose ApplicationContext configuration only differs with regard to which bean definition profiles are active.

The root cause of such errors is the fact that Spring’s EmbeddedDatabaseFactory (used internally by both the <jdbc:embedded-database> XML namespace element and the EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder for Java Config) will set the name of the embedded database to "testdb" if not otherwise specified. For the case of <jdbc:embedded-database>, the embedded database is typically assigned a name equal to the bean’s id (i.e., often something like "dataSource"). Thus, subsequent attempts to create an embedded database will not result in a new database. Instead, the same JDBC connection URL will be reused, and attempts to create a new embedded database will actually point to an existing embedded database created from the same configuration.

To address this common issue Spring Framework 4.2 provides support for generating unique names for embedded databases. To enable the use of generated names, use one of the following options.

Spring JDBC embedded database support can be extended in two ways:

You are encouraged to contribute back extensions to the Spring community at jira.spring.io.

If you want to initialize a database and you can provide a reference to a DataSource bean, use the initialize-database tag in the spring-jdbc namespace:

<jdbc:initialize-database data-source="dataSource">
    <jdbc:script location="classpath:com/foo/sql/db-schema.sql"/>
    <jdbc:script location="classpath:com/foo/sql/db-test-data.sql"/>
</jdbc:initialize-database>

The example above executes the two scripts specified against the database: the first script creates a schema, and the second populates tables with a test data set. The script locations can also be patterns with wildcards in the usual ant style used for resources in Spring (e.g. classpath*:/com/foo/**/sql/*-data.sql). If a pattern is used, the scripts are executed in lexical order of their URL or filename.

The default behavior of the database initializer is to unconditionally execute the scripts provided. This will not always be what you want, for instance, if you are executing the scripts against a database that already has test data in it. The likelihood of accidentally deleting data is reduced by following the common pattern (as shown above) of creating the tables first and then inserting the data — the first step will fail if the tables already exist.

However, to gain more control over the creation and deletion of existing data, the XML namespace provides a few additional options. The first is a flag to switch the initialization on and off. This can be set according to the environment (e.g. to pull a boolean value from system properties or an environment bean), for example:

<jdbc:initialize-database data-source="dataSource"
    enabled="#{systemProperties.INITIALIZE_DATABASE}">
    <jdbc:script location="..."/>
</jdbc:initialize-database>

The second option to control what happens with existing data is to be more tolerant of failures. To this end you can control the ability of the initializer to ignore certain errors in the SQL it executes from the scripts, for example:

<jdbc:initialize-database data-source="dataSource" ignore-failures="DROPS">
    <jdbc:script location="..."/>
</jdbc:initialize-database>

In this example we are saying we expect that sometimes the scripts will be executed against an empty database, and there are some DROP statements in the scripts which would therefore fail. So failed SQL DROP statements will be ignored, but other failures will cause an exception. This is useful if your SQL dialect doesn’t support DROP …​ IF EXISTS (or similar) but you want to unconditionally remove all test data before re-creating it. In that case the first script is usually a set of DROP statements, followed by a set of CREATE statements.

The ignore-failures option can be set to NONE (the default), DROPS (ignore failed drops), or ALL (ignore all failures).

If you need more control than you get from the XML namespace, you can simply use the DataSourceInitializer directly and define it as a component in your application.