Help setting Parameters using JDBC and Bind Variables for Oracle List

Question

I fully understand the concept of using Bind Variables when using JDBC to avoid hard parses everytime my SQL statement is executed when only a certain value changes. For example, perhaps I have the following statement:
PreparedStatement ps = con.prepareStatement("select salary from employees where employee_id = ?");
I would then set the value of the question mark (the first and in this case only parameter) using:
ps.getStmt().setString(1,empId1);
That is assuming I have the variable empId1 populated with what I want. Anyway, my question has to do with Oracle lists. In other words, if I am just executing the statement against the db, it might look like:
select salary from employees where employee_id in ('123','456','789');
I still want to use bind variables and I can do it in JDBC with something like:
select salary from employees where employee_id in ('123','456','789');
ps.getStmt().setString(1,empId1);
ps.getStmt().setString(2,empId2);
ps.getStmt().setString(3,empId3);
BUT, what if I just want to construct my list of ids upfront as a string and do something like:
select salary from employees where employee_id in (?)
ps.getStmt().setString(1,listOfEmpIds);where listOfEmpIds would look something like '123','456','789'.
That's what I want to do but it doesn't work. It would be treating the list as a single parameter as opposed to lots of individual parameters. Can someone please tell me the syntax for this if it is possible? I have tried where XX in (?) and where XX in ? (and the string I substitute has the parenthesis in it), but neither work.
Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

I always build the list myself.
You could, however, pass the list as a varchar to a stored proc and then have the stored proc parse (or dynamically execute) using it.
The second method might even be faster although I would suspect that is only going to be the case if the list is very large. Or it might not.