I have always wondered what's the best way to achieve this task. In most web based applications you have to provide search options on many different criteria. Based on what criteria is chosen behind the scene you modify your SQL. Generally, this is how I tend to go about it:-

1. Have a base SQL template.

2. In the base template have conditions like this WHERE [#PRE_COND1] AND [#PRE_COND2] .. so on and so forth. So an example SQL might look something like SELECT NAME,AGE FROM PERSONS [,#TABLE2] [,#TABLE3] WHERE [#PRE_COND1] AND [#PRE_COND2] ORDER BY [#ORD_COND1] AND [#ORD_COND2] etc.

3. During run time after figuring out the all the search criteria user has entered, I replace the [#PRE_COND1]s and [#ORD_COND1]s with the appropriate SQLs and then execute the query.

I personally do not like this brute force method. However, I never came across a better approach either. How do you accomplish such tasks generally given you are either using native JDBC or Spring JDBC?

It is almost like I need a C MACRO like functionality in Java to do this.