This is the central class in the JDBC core package. It simplifies the use of JDBC and helps to avoid common errors. It executes core JDBC workflow, leaving application code to provide SQL and extract results. This class executes SQL queries or updates, initiating iteration over ResultSets and catching JDBC exceptions and translating them to the generic, more informative exception hierarchy defined in the org.springframework.dao package.

Code using this class need only implement callback interfaces, giving them a clearly defined contract. The PreparedStatementCreator callback interface creates a prepared statement given a Connection provided by this class, providing SQL and any necessary parameters. The RowCallbackHandler interface extracts values from each row of a ResultSet.

Can be used within a service implementation via direct instantiation with a DataSource reference, or get prepared in an application context and given to services as bean reference. Note: The DataSource should always be configured as a bean in the application context, in the first case given to the service directly, in the second case to the prepared template.

The motivation and design of this class is discussed in detail in Expert One-On-One J2EE Design and Development by Rod Johnson (Wrox, 2002).

Because this class is parameterizable by the callback interfaces and the SQLExceptionTranslator interface, it isn't necessary to subclass it. All operations performed by this class are logged at debug level.