Every ResultSet object (INPUT and OUTPUT) has a schema associated with it. The schema describes the number, data type, name and extent of the columns.

This schema information for an output ResultSet is available to the Java client as a ResultSetMetaData object through the getMetaData() method of the ResultSet object. This information can be useful to the client if it wants to write generic routines to handle temp-table data, without hard coding specifics about the number of fields, their names, and their types.