How to extract from the exception the reason for the failure

Question

I have a method that executes an sql update and fails.
The description of the failure is:
com.ibm.websphere.ce.cm.DuplicateKeyException: One or more values in the INSERT statement, UPDATE statement, or foreign key update caused by a DELETE statement are not valid because the primary key, unique constraint or unique index identified by "1" constrains table "XXX" from having duplicate rows for those columns.
I didn't find a way of extracting the type of the exception (if there's one).
I want to be able to assess the exception and to return a specific error message with
the specific error explained.
thanks
Itamar

Answer 1

One can alway catch the exceptions (java.sql.SQLException) and call its getErrorCode() method,
but getMessage or getLocalizedMessage are fine also.
In your case you have primary fields or indexes that require uniqueness of some fields across records.
For instance if you have a composed primary key id+language and forget to INSERT the language.
Off course you find the spot in the code by:
try {
} catch (....Exception e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}Another preventive way is to use PreparedStatements.