Why is SQLErrorCode zero? - postgresql

Question

In my Java program I'm using JDBC to access my PostgreSQL database and that is running fine. Trying to catch SQLExceptions does not really work.
My code:
...
catch (SQLException se) {
System.out.println("\nSQLException: " + se.getMessage());
SqlErrorCode = se.getErrorCode();
System.out.println("\nSqlErrorCode: " + SqlErrorCode);
}
...
My query (generated by program):
SELECT osm_id, osm_type from (SELECT osm_dach_admin_boundaries_old.osm_id,
osm_dach_admin_boundaries_old.osm_type
FROM osm_dach_admin_boundaries_old
FULL OUTER JOIN osm_dach_admin_boundaries
ON (osm_dach_admin_boundaries_old.osm_id = osm_dach_admin_boundaries.osm_id
and osm_dach_admin_boundaries_old.osm_type = osm_dach_admin_boundaries.osm_type)
WHERE (osm_dach_admin_boundaries_old.osm_id IS NULL
OR osm_dach_admin_boundaries.osm_id IS NULL)) foo
WHERE osm_id is not null order by osm_id, osm_typeXXX;
Note the column osm_typeXXX, which I added to force an exception.
Running this query leads to
SQLException: ERROR: column "osm_typexxx" does not exist
Hinweis: Perhaps you meant to reference the column "foo.osm_type".
Position: 533
SqlErrorCode: 0
Closing source SQL-Connection
Closing destination SQL-Connection
Why is SqlErrorCode zero and how can I fix that?

Answer 1

java.sql.SQLException.getErrorCode() is documented as:
Retrieves the vendor-specific exception code for this SQLException object.
Now PostgreSQL doesn't have vendor-specific error codes – it uses the standard conforming SQLSTATE instead.
So you should use java.sql.SQLException.getSQLState().