Characteristics of a JDBC ResultSet under the IBM Data Server Driver for JDBC and SQLJ

The IBM® Data Server Driver for JDBC and SQLJ provides support for scrollable, updatable, and holdable cursors.

In addition to moving forward, one row at a time, through a ResultSet, you might want to do the following things:

Move backward or go directly to a specific row
Update, delete, or insert rows in a ResultSet
Leave the ResultSet open after a COMMIT

The following terms describe characteristics of a ResultSet:

scrollability: Whether the cursor for the ResultSet can move forward only, or forward one or more rows, backward one or more rows, or to a specific row.
If a cursor for a ResultSet is scrollable, it also has a sensitivity attribute, which describes whether the cursor is sensitive to changes to the underlying table.
updatability: Whether the cursor can be used to update or delete rows. This characteristic does not apply to a ResultSet that is returned from a stored procedure, because a stored procedure ResultSet cannot be updated.
holdability: Whether the cursor stays open after a COMMIT.

You set the updatability, scrollability, and holdability characteristics of a ResultSet through parameters in the Connection.prepareStatement or Connection.createStatement methods. The ResultSet settings map to attributes of a cursor in the database. The following table lists the JDBC scrollability, updatability, and holdability settings, and the corresponding cursor attributes.

Table 1. JDBC ResultSet characteristics and SQL cursor attributes
JDBC setting	Db2® cursor setting	IBM Informix® cursor setting
CONCUR_READ_ONLY	FOR READ ONLY	FOR READ ONLY
CONCUR_UPDATABLE	FOR UPDATE	FOR UPDATE
HOLD_CURSORS_OVER_COMMIT	WITH HOLD	WITH HOLD
TYPE_FORWARD_ONLY	SCROLL not specified	SCROLL not specified
TYPE_SCROLL_INSENSITIVE	INSENSITIVE SCROLL	SCROLL
TYPE_SCROLL_SENSITIVE	SENSITIVE STATIC, SENSITIVE DYNAMIC, or ASENSITIVE, depending on the cursorSensitivity Connection and DataSource property	Not supported

If a JDBC ResultSet is static, the size of the result table and the order of the rows in the result table do not change after the cursor is opened. This means that if you insert rows into the underlying table, the result table for a static ResultSet does not change. If you delete a row of a result table, a delete hole occurs. You cannot update or delete a delete hole.