Urgent Help!

[Prabha Dhandapani]

Hi all,
I have a piece of code as follows:

 
String fetchAssoc(String query, ArrayList al,String searchterm)
throws Exception 
{
RowSet rs = DBBroker.getDBBroker("EHealthDB").execute(query, al);
String whole = ""; 
StringBuffer assoc = new StringBuffer();

ArrayList arl = new ArrayList(); 
int counter = 0; 
if (rs != null && rs.next()) 
{
rs.beforeFirst();
while (rs != null && rs.next()) {

        if (counter==0)
            {
   arl.add(getColumn(rs,"ASSOC_WORD_ROOT"));
      counter++;
          }
        else
        {
   if(!(arl.contains(getColumn(rs,"ASSOC_WORD_ROOT"))))
   { 
   
      arl.add(getColumn(rs,"ASSOC_WORD_ROOT"));
   counter++;
      }
        }
                 
                if(!(arl.contains(getColumn(rs,"ASSOC_WORD_ALTERNATE"))))
{
              arl.add(getColumn(rs,"ASSOC_WORD_ALTERNATE"));
   counter++;
   }
        

} //end of while loop


//assoc.append(XmlBuilder.buildtag("other", getColumn(rs,"ASSOC_WORD_ALTERNATE") ));
            for(int i=0;i<arl.size();i++)
            {
            
            
            assoc.append(XmlBuilder.buildtag("other", arl.get(i).toString()));
            
            System.out.println("THE OTHER TAG ELEMENT ADDED TO THE BUFFER   " + arl.get(i).toString());
            }
whole = XmlBuilder.buildtag("others", assoc.toString());

}

System.out.println("\n!!!!!!!!!!!FINALLY OUT OF EVERTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!\n");
rs.close();
return whole;
}

Is anythign wring with the way I have used the ArrayList.Please let me know if there are any errors in this?Any help ASAP would be appreciated.
Many Thanks in advance,
Prabha

[Joel McNary]

Near as I can tell, it looks fine. I would not actually use ArrayList as my reference type; instead, I would use the more generic List (or even Collection). That way I could change it to a LinkedList or even some typ eo fSet if I wanted to.
Are you having any specific problems with this code? If so, please post them. We can't solve a problem if we don't know what it is.