Extracting date from oracle/other databases exactly to java

Question

Hello Friends,
Iam creating a simple program which extracts data from any database and stores it in an XML file and also it can extract data from an XML file and updates the database.
My program is just getting the tablename as an input and from that it builds the query (select * from tablename). Through ResultSet, Iam extracting date fields with getDate() method of ResultSet, which is yeilding converted dates [In oracle if date is 23-DEC-1980, Im getting it as 1980-12-23 in java]. Even getString() method of ResultSet doesn't work.
I want my program to work with any database engine, which may have their own date formats. Kindly can anyone suggest me a way to extract date from any database exactly as it is to java.
NOTE:: I can't use to_char(datefield) type commands in SQLQUERY as the only input to my program is tablename and my query is, select * from tablename.
Regards,
Ch.Praveen.

Answer 1

HI Friends,
Thanks for your fast replies. My program is extracting data from a database and generating an XML file for it, which is as follows.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<table tableName="EMP">
<row>
<column columnName="EMPNO" columnType="NUMBER">7369</column>
<column columnName="ENAME" columnType="VARCHAR2">'SMITH'</column>
<column columnName="JOB" columnType="VARCHAR2">'CLERK'</column>
<column columnName="MGR" columnType="NUMBER">7902</column>
<column columnName="HIREDATE" columnType="DATE">'1980-12-17'</column>
<column columnName="SAL" columnType="NUMBER">800</column>
<column columnName="COMM" columnType="NUMBER" />
<column columnName="DEPTNO" columnType="NUMBER">20</column>
</row>
<row>
<column columnName="EMPNO" columnType="NUMBER">7499</column>
<column columnName="ENAME" columnType="VARCHAR2">'ALLEN'</column>
<column columnName="JOB" columnType="VARCHAR2">'SALESMAN'</column>
<column columnName="MGR" columnType="NUMBER">7698</column>
<column columnName="HIREDATE" columnType="DATE">'1981-02-20'</column>
<column columnName="SAL" columnType="NUMBER">1600</column>
<column columnName="COMM" columnType="NUMBER">300</column>
<column columnName="DEPTNO" columnType="NUMBER">30</column>
</row>
</table>
Here you can observe that HIREDATE column is having date in different format than in oracle. We are getting an error while we are extracting data from an XML file and updating the database, as dateformats differ. Can anyone provide a solution, which extracts date from database to java exactly as per the dateformat in database.