Get MySQL version with Java

Question

I tested this code to get MySQL version:

public void testMySQLVersion() throws Exception
    {
        System.out.println("\nTesting SQL query for MySQL version\n");

        // Load the JDBC driver
        DriverManager.registerDriver(new oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver());

        // Connect to the database
        Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:oracle:thin:@112.213.131.40:3306:webdb", "admin", "eHqtaXuc6h1w");

        PreparedStatement pstmt
            = conn.prepareStatement("SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'version'");

        ResultSet rset = pstmt.executeQuery();

        while (rset.next())
        {
            System.out.println("MySQL version " + rset.getString("Value"));
        }

        pstmt.close();
        conn.close();
    }

But I get this result when I run the code:

Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 1, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.634 sec <<< FAILURE! - in org.mysql.engine.osgi.impl.MySQLImplTest
testMySQLVersion(org.mysql.engine.osgi.impl.MySQLImplTest)  Time elapsed: 0.633 sec  <<< ERROR!
java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: 12300
    at java.lang.String.checkBounds(String.java:385)
    at java.lang.String.<init>(String.java:324)
    at oracle.net.ns.Packet.extractData(Packet.java:447)
    at oracle.net.ns.RefusePacket.<init>(RefusePacket.java:70)
    at oracle.net.ns.NSProtocolStream.negotiateConnection(NSProtocolStream.java:239)
    at oracle.net.ns.NSProtocol.connect(NSProtocol.java:264)
    at oracle.jdbc.driver.T4CConnection.connect(T4CConnection.java:1452)
    at oracle.jdbc.driver.T4CConnection.logon(T4CConnection.java:496)
    at oracle.jdbc.driver.PhysicalConnection.connect(PhysicalConnection.java:666)
    at oracle.jdbc.driver.T4CDriverExtension.getConnection(T4CDriverExtension.java:32)
    at oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver.connect(OracleDriver.java:566)
    at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:664)
    at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:247)
    at org.mysql.engine.osgi.impl.MySQLImplTest.testMySQLVersion(MySQLImplTest.java:66)

Can you give me some advice how to solve this issue?

Answer 1

To obtain the database version, there is a much simpler solution. Once you have a Connection to the database, you can get its metadata and extract the version from it with getDatabaseProductVersion():

Connection con = ...;
DatabaseMetaData meta = con.getMetaData();
System.out.println(meta.getDatabaseProductVersion());

This will work for MySQL or Oracle database.

Note that your current code is weird: you want to obtain the MySQL database version but your SQL connection String deals with Oracle (jdbc:oracle:thin).