curious speed problem with java's resultSet getString - Java

"Sulla" <sulla@bonzomadrid.com> wrote in message
news:43aa4605.0407010718.76aee694@posting.google.com...
> I ran into an interesting "problem" the other day when I was working
> on a very simple zip code utility function.
>
> I have a table in Oracle with the following columns: zipcode, state,
> latitude, longitude.
>
> My method calculates the distance from a given zipcode to all zipcodes
> by doing the following:
>
> 1. select zipcode, latitude, longitude from zipcode_table;
> 2. while rs.next() calc distance
> 3. append to the string buffer if some simple condition.
>
> Now, I noticed that the dang thing was slow. Like 3000 ms (table is
> 70K rows and I have a 10mb connection (this is an office lan)).
>
> So I took out everything that was conditional and essentially changed
> the method to get everything out of the database and keep appending it
> to a string. What happens is that the time count goes like this:
>
> 1
> 2
> 4
> ....70,000 records later...
> 23
> 423
> 424
> 424
> 424
> 425
>
> Did you notice the crazy jump in the middle? This ALWAYS happens to
> the last few numbers. I even put in some state restrictions in the
> query and it still happens to the last few (sometimes the last 5
> sometimes the last 10). And you know what? The offending method seems
> to be the resultSet.getString().
>
> This sucks ass because its used all over the place in my application.
> How can something like getString() taking so long at the end of the
> iteration through the result set?
>
> I await some insight into this seemingly crazed problem.
>
> -sulla

By appending to a string I hope you do not mean a String object and its +=
operator?

Silvio Bierman