title: getting column names in JDBC
body: <p>I was wondering how to tell if a column with a certain name exists in a certain database table. I'm using JDBC but if it can be done with pure SQL, it's even better. The solution has to be independent of the DBMS-provider however. I guess I could do that by querying the first row of the table and getting ResultSetMetaData from it, but that assumes there is a row in a table. I would want it to work with an empty table too. Thanks in advance!</p>