Question

I have a method that looks like this:

try {
  doStuff();
} catch (Exception ex) {
  logger.error(ex);
}

(I don’t really use method names like doStuff – this is just to make things easy)

In doStuff I do a variety of things, among them is call a data access method (so, another method within doStuff) that ends with the following:

} catch (SQLException ex) {
  logger.error(ex);
} finally {
  try {
    connection.close();
    proc.close();
    results.close();
  } catch (Exception e) {
    logger.error(e);
  } //<--Exception thrown here. HUH?
}
return stuff;

When stepping through this code I get to the second to last curly brace (marked with a comment) and then jump up to the catch in the first code block with a NullPointer exception. The results.close() is what is being run right before it (results is not null). My IDE (NetBeans) doesn’t provide a stack trace (it shows the stack trace is null) or any other information other than the name of the exception (from what I can tell).

This code was running fine previously. In fact while it was running, I changed the stored procedure that the data access method (where I’m getting this exception) was calling, and then this error started to occur (without the application having been stopped at all). I’ve since tried rebuilding and restarting but to no avail. I could change the sproc back but I really want to find out what this error is from since it makes no sense that the sproc would even be a part of this considering where in the code the exception is occurring.

Answer 1

your doStuff() method is throwing something other than a SQLException and it is not being caught. add a catch(Exception e) block and log that exception and see what happens.

this code sample exhibits the same behaviour you are describing:

public class TryCatchTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            System.out.println("foo");
            throw new NullPointerException();
        } finally {
            try {
                System.out.println("bar");
            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        } // exception thrown here
    }
}