When getObject returns a String or a byte[]

[ecka.kjellberg]

Hi
I got a question:
When does the getObject(n) on the ResultSet return a String respectively a byte[]?

The reason is that I got the following query:

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(atimestamp,'%Y-%m-%d %T') FROM atable;

And previously with MySQL 4.0.x I got back a String with a nicely formatted date like ‘2005-03-18 12:38:32’
But now I upgraded to MySQL 4.1 I get back a byte array that gets rendered as ‘[B@12558d6’ when I print it.

The resultset metadata on the field level looks a little bit different.

For MySQL 4.0.x
null . (null) . DATE_FORMAT(atimestamp,'%Y-%m-%d %T')(null), Mysql type: 253

For MySQL 4.1
. () . DATE_FORMAT(atimestamp,'%Y-%m-%d %T')(), Mysql type: 253

I could accept that I’m forced to use getString (that will give me a String with ‘2005-03-18 12:38:32’) and getObject when I’m interested in the actual bytes.

But my question remains...