Question

As we have two date classes: java.sql.Date and java.util.Date. Whats the reason ResultSet#getDate() returns the sql.Date not util.Date?
Agreed that sql.Date extends util.Date. But whats the reason of creating new class altogether when most of the methods in both the classes looks same?

Answer 1

The reason is right in the JavaDocs of java.sql.Date:

To conform with the definition of SQL DATE, the millisecond values wrapped by a java.sql.Date instance must be ‘normalized’ by setting the hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds to zero in the particular time zone with which the instance is associated

So a java.util.Date has a “time” part, whereas in a java.sql.Date the time is always “zero” because the (ANSI) SQL DATE data type does not have a time either.