Listing out tables in a database

[Suma K Gowda]

Hi

I'm connecting to a database and want to display all the available tables under that database. How can I do it?

I checked the whole java.sql api..but didn't find anything which actually displays the tables under a database..

Plz help

[Paul Sturrock]

All the metadata functionality of JDBC is supplied by jav.sql.DatabaseMetaData. If there's nothing in there to do what you want, you'll have to resort to the verdor-specific queries for doing this ("show tables" in mysql, "select * from user_tables" in Oracle, "select * from sysobjects where xtype ='U'" in MSSQL etc.)

[ June 11, 2004: Message edited by: Paul Sturrock ]
[ June 11, 2004: Message edited by: Paul Sturrock ]

[Peter den Haan]

Exactly.

private static final String[] TABLE_TYPES = new String[] { "TABLE", "VIEW" };
...
DatabaseMetaData metaData = conn.getMetaData();
ResultSet tableRS = metaData.getTables(conn.getCatalog(), schema, "%", TABLE_TYPES);

Will give you all tables and views in a given schema. See the javadoc for further information on the metadata API. For a detailed discussion, the standard recommendation is the excellent The JDBC API Tutorial and Reference (reviewed in the Bunkhouse; I should add that as one of the tech reviewers on this book I'm not unprejudiced).

- Peter
[ June 11, 2004: Message edited by: Peter den Haan ]