"UPDATE" Statements

This section describes how to update existing data rows with UPDATE statements.

UPDATE statements are also commonly used by database applications when using users making changes to field values on the UI. An UPDATE statements should have a SET clause to provide a list of columns with new values and a WHERE clause to identify the rows to be updated.

UPDATE statements should be executed with the executeUpdate() method. The Java tutorial program below shows you how to update some columns for specific rows:

/* UpdateRows.java
 * Copyright (c) HerongYang.com. All Rights Reserved.
 */
import java.sql.*;
public class UpdateRows {
  public static void main(String [] args) {
    Connection con = null;
    try {

      con = DriverManager.getConnection(
          "jdbc:sqlserver://localhost\\SQLEXPRESS;"
        + "user=herong;password=T0pSecret;"
        + "database=AdventureWorks2019");
      Statement sta = con.createStatement();

// updating multiple rows
      int count = sta.executeUpdate(
        "UPDATE Herong.Customer SET ModifiedDate = '2015-04-01'"
        + " WHERE CustomerID > 6");
      System.out.println("Number of rows updated: "+count);

// getting the data back
      ResultSet res = sta.executeQuery(
        "SELECT * FROM Herong.Customer");
      System.out.println("List of Customers: ");
      while (res.next()) {
         System.out.println(
           "  "+res.getInt("CustomerID")
           + ", "+res.getString("FirstName")
           + ", "+res.getString("LastName")
           + ", "+res.getDate("ModifiedDate"));
      }
      res.close();

      sta.close();
      con.close();
    } catch (Exception e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
  }
}

The output confirms that 5 rows were updated with a new date in the LastAccessDate column:

herong> java -cp .;mssql-jdbc-9.4.1.jre16.jar UpdateRows

Number of rows updated: 5
List of Customers:
  1, Ken, Sánchez, 2009-01-07
  2, Terri, Duffy, 2008-01-24
  3, Roberto, Tamburello, 2007-11-04
  4, Rob, Walters, 2007-11-28
  5, Gail, Erickson, 2007-12-30
  6, Jossef, Goldberg, 2013-12-16
  7, Dylan, Miller, 2015-04-01
  8, Diane, Margheim, 2015-04-01
  9, Gigi, Matthew, 2015-04-01
  10, Michael, Raheem, 2015-04-01
  11, Herong, Yang, 2015-04-01

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) Introduction

 JDK (Java SE) Installation

 Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition

 Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server

 Microsoft JDBC Driver - Query Statements and Result Sets

 Microsoft JDBC Driver - DatabaseMetaData Object

 Microsoft JDBC Driver - DDL Statements

Microsoft JDBC Driver - DML Statements

 "SELECT ... INTO" Statements

 "INSERT INTO" Statements

 "INSERT INTO" Statements with INDENTITY Columns

"UPDATE" Statements

 "DELETE FROM" Statements

 SQL Server - PreparedStatement

 SQL Server CLOB (Character Large Object) - TEXT

 SQL Server BLOB (Binary Large Object) - BLOB

 JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver - sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver

 JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver - Flat Text Files

 JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver - MS Access

 JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver - MS SQL Server

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB