Escape characters using Oracle JDBC

Question

We use Oracle JDBC driver to do some operations on an Oracle 9i database, and ran into some problems with escape characters. Basically we'd like to escape the _ and % characters.
The following two example statements both work:
ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("select * from identifier_protein where upper(IDENTIFIER_ACCNO) like 'NM\\_%' escape '\\' ");
ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("select * from identifier_protein where upper(IDENTIFIER_ACCNO) like 'NM\\_%' {escape '\\' }");
However, when we have multiple query terms and the "escape" clause doesn't immediately follows EACH "like" clause, we got errors saying the sql statement does not end properly. One such example is the following:
ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("select * from identifier_protein where upper(IDENTIFIER_ACCNO) like 'NM\\_%' and creator = 'ABC' {escape '\\'} ");
If we put an "escape" clause following each "like" clause, then it works.
My question is, is there a smart way of letting JDBC knows that you want to use an escape character everywhere in the query? We often do very complicated dynamic queries, frequently with table joins and boolean logic and subqueries with tons of query terms. Trying to add the escape clause to each "like" clause is very painful. Any help is highly appreciated. Thanks!
BL

Answer 1

I'd use PreparedStatements, if you're not already. Let the JDBC driver escape things properly for you. That's what the setString() and setDate() methods are all about.