database, and often need the latest timestamp, but want to
format it as a date. With 7.0.x, I just

 select ts from foo order by ts desc limit 1

and in java: d = res.getDate(1);

but this fails everywhere in my code now :(

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/guide/jdbc/spec/jdbc-spec.frame7.html

says

  The ResultSet.getXXX methods will attempt to
  convert whatever SQL type was returned by the
  database to whatever Java type is returned by
  the getXXX method.

Palle Girgensohn