MS Access woes

Question

Hi all,
I am quite frustrated with running sql queries on an MS Access 2002 database.
First a simple query such as
'Select DISTINCT VariableName from DISTRIBUTIONDATA' returns all the rows in my database.
I also tried 'Select DISTINCTROW VariableName from DISTRIBUTIONDATA' but to no avail.
I tried executing the same query in MSAccess 2002, ofcourse it works perfectly fine. The other query that I so desperately wish to run is
Select Count(*) AS Expr1 From (SELECT DISTINCT VariableName, DataGroupName from DistributionData WHERE SettingID='Regional' GROUP BY VariableName, DataGroupName)
However it just does not seem to work. The java error that I get is
java.sql.SQLException: [Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] Syntax error in FROM clause.
     at sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbc.createSQLException(JdbcOdbc.java:6958)
     at sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbc.standardError(JdbcOdbc.java:7115)
     at sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbc.SQLExecDirect(JdbcOdbc.java:3111)
whereas I could not find much of an error in my from clause. The above query is what is being built and is printed out with a system.out statement.
Infact even the subquery
SELECT DISTINCT VariableName, DataGroupName from DistributionData WHERE SettingID='Regional' GROUP BY VariableName, DataGroupName
from the above from clause runs on it's own, it simply does not return the correct number of records.
Thanks in advance for your help...

Answer 1

Firstly, I don't have much option, I have to use MS access.. i know it sucks.. but still...
Secondly, Here's some of the code... ( and yeah I have tried n combinations of capitalization - doesn't help)
Statement inputStmt = inputConnection.createStatement(
ResultSet.TYPE_SCROLL_INSENSITIVE,
ResultSet.CONCUR_READ_ONLY);
String inputQuery = "SELECT DISTINCT VariableName, DataGroupName FROM DistributionData WHERE SettingID='"
+ categories[i] + "' GROUP BY VariableName, DataGroupName";
System.out.println( inputQuery );
//get all datagroupnames and variablenames for this category
ResultSet inputSet = inputStmt.executeQuery( inputQuery );
// get the count of this result set for each category
inputSet.last();
int count1 = inputSet.getRow();
System.out.println("For " +categories[i]+ " we have "+count1+" rows in inputdatabase");
inputSet.beforeFirst();
This is the output that it produces
You chose to open this file: NationDB.mdb
SELECT DISTINCT VariableName, DataGroupName FROM DistributionData WHERE SettingID='Regional' GROUP BY VariableName, DataGroupName
For Regional we have 12 rows in inputdatabase.
If I change the above query to simply SELECT GROUP BY VariableName from DistributionData ( don't pay too much attention to the capitalization) then it gives me a Syntax error. ..
lastly, how do I define a query in Access and select from that. ??
Thanks