Refactoring methods that use the same code but different types

Question

I have several methods that do the same thing yet, when interfacing with the MySQL database, save or load a different type of parameter. Currently, I have a different method

Answer 1

What if you broke out your comparative functionality and had your methods down to the most granular level? For example:

public static void update(Connection con, int playerID, String tableName, String fieldName, String value) {
    // update query logic here
}

And the same for delete(). There is no reason to pass both the "new" and "original" values into this function and do the compare inside. I suggest looping through the arrays, comparing, and calling either update() or delete() based on your needs. To deal with different data types, I would always pass in the String value of what you want in the database.