DatabaseMetaData strange behavior

[Lukas Alamar]

hi ranchers
im a bit stuck on a problem so i need your help!

i have a very easy piece of code that uses a Connection and a DatabaseMetaData to retrieve tables and their columns .. so far so good .. for a bunch of tables the number of columns is doubled!! and i dont know why ..

DatabaseMetaData dbmd = con.getMetaData();
ResultSet rset = null;
try
{
rset = dbmd.getTables(null, null, "%", new String[]{"TABLE"});    
while(rset.next()) 
{
Table table = new Table(rset.getString("TABLE_NAME"));
ResultSet colRset = null;
try
{
colRset = dbmd.getColumns(null, null, table.getName(), null);
logger.debug(table.getName() + " ");
int colcount = 0;
while(colRset.next())
{
Column column = new Column(colRset.getString("COLUMN_NAME"));
table.addColumn(column);
colcount++;
}
logger.debug("cols=" + colcount);
}
finally
{
if(colRset != null) colRset.close();
}
tables.add(table);
    }

then i get "MYTABLE cols=8" for .. say ..a table with only 4 cols ..

i know it may be trivial for some of you but that's my first attempt at using DatabaseMetaData

thanks for any help
[ March 28, 2006: Message edited by: Lukas Alamar ]

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Lukas,
I suspect there may be some hidden columns. The easiest way to confirm that or see what is going on is to print out colRset.getString("COLUMN_NAME") within your loop. Then you can see precisely what is being returned.

[Lukas Alamar]

hi Jeanne,
thanks for your reply
i did what you suggested and here's the output for one of those weird tables:

WEIRD_TABLE
C_KEY
N_PRG
T_DES
D_TMP_INS
C_KEY
N_PRG
T_DES
D_TMP_INS

obviously if i check the table with my db client i see only the first 4 columns!

most of the tables are correct .. this behavior is just for a few of them

(im feeling very ignorant ..)
[ March 30, 2006: Message edited by: Lukas Alamar ]