How to get equivalent of ResultSetMetaData without ResultSet

Question

I need to resolve a bunch of column names to column indexes (so as to use some of the nice ResultSetMetaData methods). However, the only way that I know how to

Answer 1

Assuming you're doing a select * from mytable you could just add a where clause that ensures no records will be returned and the ResultSet will be empty?

That way you are still just getting the metadata for the table you are interested in instead of the entire database.