Forcing a line to execute before another - how to

Question

I am creating a Java desktop GUI application where I am accessing oracle database. Some queries take up to 1 min to return results, so I have a textbox that displays some information like "fetching data" so the user knows wats happening. I am trying to do this by
public Connection my_db_conn() {
        try {
                jTextArea1.append(getMyTime() + "\nAttempting connection to harkishora-Oracle dB....\n");
           // connect to dB statements here OR other fetch data queries
                jTextArea1.append(getMyTime() + "\nconnection established successfully\n");
        } catch (Exception e) {
            jTextArea1.append("\n--------\n" + getMyTime() + "\nUnable to connect to harkishora-Oracle dB. Probably the server is down.\n--------\n");
        return (conn);
    }the issue is before it appends the info "Attempting connection to harkishora-Oracle dB....", I mean before it visually puts the text to the textarea.....it actually executes the connection statements and after it finishes all this prints the info the screen. My idea is to force it to print the info first and then go on to connect to the dB.
any help would be appreciated.....Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Yours is likely a concurrency issue -- where your database code is being called on Swing's Event Dispatch Thread (the EDT) and tying it up. Since this thread is the single thread that Swing uses for painting the GUI and interacting with the user, this effectively freezes your app until the database reading is through.
Solution: do the database work in a background thread. Please read this for details on the problem and its solution:
[Concurrency in Swing|http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/concurrency/index.html]