Database Metadata with JDBC  A sample from JDBC Metadata, MySQL,
and Oracle Recipes by Mahmoud Parsian.  The goal of this chapter
(and the next) is to show you how to use JDBC’s database
metadata API, which you can use to get information about tables,
views, column names, column types, stored procedures, result
sets, and databases. It will be of most interest to those who
need to write applications that adapt themselves to the specific
capabilities of several database systems or to the content of
any database. If you write programs—such as graphical user
interface (GUI) database applications using database
adapters—that use advanced database features or programs that
discover database stored procedures and tables or views at
runtime (i.e., dynamically), you will have to use metadata. You
can use database metadata to    • Discover database schema and
catalog information.    • Discover database users, tables,
views, and stored procedures.    • Understand and analyze the
result sets returned by SQL queries.    •