MySQL's AUTO_INCREMENT and JDBC

Question

I have the following that doesnt seem to work. The custID field i haven't specified in the prepare statement (because it's an AUTO_INCREMENT value , but for some reason it won't work without it. Nothing is added to the table when the method is completely run.
int rows = 0;
Connection conn = getConnection();
PreparedStatement pstmt = null;
try{
      pstmt = conn.prepareStatement(
     "insert into Customers values(" +
    "?," + //customername
       pstmt.setString(1, customerBean.getCustomerName());
catch (SQLException se)
    rollback(conn);
    System.out.println(msg);
     System.out.println(se);
     throw new Exception(se);
} | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
-------------------------------------------------------------+
| CUST_ID | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| CUST_NAME | varchar(100) | YES | | NULL | |
Any ideas? I want a proper way of forumlating a query using a prepared statement and using the AUTO_INCREMENT value so that when a new row is added the cust_Id field is incremented.
Another question, why is the SQLException not being caught? I have another method which gets all the rows from a table, if i change the prepared statement to an invalid table then it gives me an exception. I was previously using Oracle, SQLException was being caught when a duplicate entry was added.

Answer 1

Doesn't work :(
try {
     Connection conn = getConnection();
     stmt = conn.createStatement();
     stmt.executeUpdate(
     "INSERT INTO Customers (customerName) "
     + "values ('Hello World')");
Of course it doesn't work.
1. That's not what was suggested.
2. It's going to throw an exception, because you don't have a column named "customerName", you have a column IN THE DATABASE named "cust_name"