Connection nullpointerexception on reload of applet

Question

I have the following sqlj code in an applet to retrive data from an oracle database. After this the code goes onto draw the data in the applet using AWT (that code isn't shown here).
My trouble is that when I get to the following line Connection con = Oracle.connect("jdbc:oracle:thin:@ebalpha:1525:ORCL", "flowmanager", "xxxxx").getConnection(); I get a Null Pointer exception, but only after refreshing the applet.
Is there something in need to add to close or null the conntection?
So to overcap I get a NullPointerException only when I refresh the applet. It runs perfectly the first time. The applet need to be refreshed because the data in the table gets updated and the applet needs to be refreshed to show the data changes.
public void getFlowSpaceData() throws SQLException {
// MyIter iter;
String strUserName = getParameter("paramUserName");
String strFlowName = new String();
Connection con = Oracle.connect("jdbc:oracle:thin:@ebalpha:1525:ORCL", "flowmanager", "xxxxx").getConnection();
strQuery = "select FLOWNAME FROM FLOWMANAGER.TMP_FLOWNAMES WHERE USERNAME ='" + strUserName +"'";
PreparedStatement pstmt0 = con.prepareStatement(strQuery);
ResultSet rs0 = pstmt0.executeQuery();
while (rs0.next()) {
strFlowName = rs0.Long postings are being truncated to ~1 kB at this time.

Answer 1

Just wanted to update the post that I came up with a solution. I created a sepreate thread and it now works fine, but the sqlj code does take some time to load. I was wondering if somone could take a quick look at my code and see if their is anyway I could extact the data faster.
String strUserName = getParameter("paramUserName");
strQuery = "select FLOWNAME FROM FLOWMANAGER.TMP_FLOWNAMES WHERE USERNAME ='" + strUserName +"'";
Connection con = Oracle.connect("jdbc:oracle:thin:@ebalpha2.us.oracle.com:1525:ORCL", "flowmanager", "ur2c001").getConnection();
PreparedStatement pstmt0 = con.prepareStatement(strQuery);
ResultSet rs0 = pstmt0.executeQuery();
while (rs0.next()) {
strFlowName = rs0.getString(1);
rs0.close();
pstmt0.close();
strQuery = "select FLOWNAME, USERNAME, PANELROW, PANELCOL, RELATEROW, RELATECOL, OBJTYPE, BASECODE, INDUSTRYID, PANELNUM, BUSINESSPROCESSID FROM flows WHERE flowname ='" + strFlowName + "' ORDER BY PANELNUM";
PreparedStatement pstmt1 = con.prepareStatement(strQuery);
ResultSet rs1 = pstmt1.executeQuery();
int r = 0;
int c = 0;
while (rs1.next()) {
intObjType[r][c]= rs1.getInt(7);
strID[r][c] = rs1.getString(11);
Long postings are being truncated to ~1 kB at this time.