What is ResultSetMetaData in JDBC? What is its significance?

The ResultSetMetaData provides information about the obtained ResultSet object like, the number of columns, names of the columns, datatypes of the columns, name of the table etc…

Following are some methods of ResultSetMetaData class.

Example

import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.ResultSetMetaData;
import java.sql.Statement;
public class ResultSetMetadataExample {
   public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {
      //Registering the Driver
      DriverManager.registerDriver(new com.mysql.jdbc.Driver());
      //Getting the connection
      String mysqlUrl = "jdbc:mysql://localhost/TestDB";
      Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection(mysqlUrl, "root", "password");
      System.out.println("Connection established......");
      //Creating a Statement object
      Statement stmt = con.createStatement();
      //Retrieving the data
      ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("select * from Dataset");
      ResultSetMetaData rsMetaData = rs.getMetaData();
      //Number of columns
      System.out.println("Number of columns: "+rsMetaData.getColumnCount());
      //Column label
      System.out.println("Column Label: "+rsMetaData.getColumnLabel(1));
      //Column name
      System.out.println("Column Name: "+rsMetaData.getColumnName(1));
      //Number of columns
      System.out.println("Table Name: "+rsMetaData.getTableName(1));
   }
}

Output

Connection established......
Number of columns: 2
Column Label: mobile_brand
Column Name: mobile_brand
Table Name: dataset