Question

While dealing with heterogeneous containers (i.e. database cursor with strings, ints etc.), what (and why) is better approach:

Vector<?> 

or

Vector<Object>

You can substitute Vector for any other Collection, that’s just example.

Answer 1

I’m not exactly sure what you’re comparing. Trying to create a vector like

    java.util.Vector<?> v = new java.util.Vector<?>();

gets an error, Cannot instantiate the type Vector<?>

If you use <?> in a parameter list (without using the super keyword) that means you can’t insert anything into the collection. If you use <Object> then you can insert and remove things.