Return ResultSet Method

Question

What am I doing wrong to get a "cannot return symbol" error? The code is:
public ResultSet dataSet(){
     String DRIVER="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver";
     try {
     Class.forName(DRIVER);
          //get a recordset;
          Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection ("jdbc:mysql://localhost/fms");
          Statement stmt = conn.createStatement ();
          ResultSet rset = stmt.executeQuery ("select * from filename");
          //return rset;
     catch(Exception e){
     System.out.println(e);
     return rset;
     }

Answer 1

easy, because the declaration of rset is only in scope inside the try block.
once you leave it's out of scope.
that might be a good thing, because you really don't want to return a ResultSet. Better to load that info into an object or data structure and close the ResultSet immediately in a finally block.
Lots of bad things in your code:
(1) Hard-wired driver and URL - should externalize
(2) You don't close your Connection, Statement, or ResultSet.
(3) Print the stack trace in the catch block, it might actually help you figure out any problems.
(4) No connection pooling.
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