[java] What does the following Oracle error mean: invalid column index

I got the following error while testing some code:

SQLException: Invalid column index

What exactly does that mean?

Is there an online document explaining what all the Oracle error codes and statements?

I had this problem using a prepared statement. I didn't add enough "?" for the "VALUES" My eclipse had crashed after I did add the proper amount, and lost those changes. But that didn't occur to me to be the error until I started combing through the SQL as p.campbell suggested.

the final sql statement is something like:

select col_1 from table_X where col_2 = 'abcd';

i run this inside my SQL IDE and everything is ok.

Next, i try to build this statement with java:

String queryString= "select col_1 from table_X where col_2 = '?';";
PreparedStatement stmt = con.prepareStatement(queryString);
stmt.setString(1, "abcd"); //raises java.sql.SQLException: Invalid column index

Although the sql statement (the first one, ran against the database) contains quotes around string values, and also finishes with a semicolumn, the string that i pass to the PreparedStatement should not contain quotes around the wildcard character ?, nor should it finish with semicolumn.

i just removed the characters that appear on white background

"select col_1 from table_X where col_2 = ' ? ' ; ";

to obtain

"select col_1 from table_X where col_2 = ?";

(i found the solution here: https://coderanch.com/t/424689/databases/java-sql-SQLException-Invalid-column)

I also got this type error, problem is wrong usage of parameters to statement like, Let's say you have a query like this

SELECT * FROM EMPLOYE E WHERE E.ID = ?

and for the preparedStatement object (JDBC) if you set the parameters like

preparedStatement.setXXX(1,value);
preparedStatement.setXXX(2,value)

then it results in SQLException: Invalid column index

So, I removed that second parameter setting to prepared statement then problem solved

Using Spring's SimpleJdbcTemplate, I got it when I tried to do this:

String sqlString = "select pwy_code from approver where university_id = '123'";
List<Map<String, Object>> rows = getSimpleJdbcTemplate().queryForList(sqlString, uniId);

• I had an argument to queryForList that didn't correspond to a question mark in the SQL. The first line should have been:

  String sqlString = "select pwy_code from approver where university_id = ?";
  

I had the exact same problem when using Spring Security 3.1.0. and Oracle 11G. I was using the following query and getting the invalid column index error:

<security:jdbc-user-service data-source-ref="dataSource"
                users-by-username-query="SELECT A.user_name AS username, A.password AS password FROM MB_REG_USER A where A.user_name=lower(?)"

It turns out that I needed to add: "1 as enabled" to the query:

<security:jdbc-user-service data-source-ref="dataSource" users-by-username query="SELECT A.user_name AS username, A.password AS password, 1 as enabled FROM MB_REG_USER A where A.user_name=lower(?)"

Everything worked after that. I believe this could be a bug in the Spring JDBC core package...

It sounds like you're trying to SELECT a column that doesn't exist.

Perhaps you're trying to ORDER BY a column that doesn't exist?

Any typos in your SQL statement?

I had this problem in one legacy application that create prepared statement dynamically.

String firstName;
StringBuilder query =new StringBuilder("select id, name from employee where country_Code=1");
query.append("and  name like '");
query.append(firstName + "' ");
query.append("and ssn=?");
PreparedStatement preparedStatement =new prepareStatement(query.toString());

when it try to set value for ssn, it was giving invalid column index error, and finally found out that it is caused by firstName having ' within; that disturb the syntax.