Greetings Java people!
In my effort to understand the process of dealing with databases and web pages I am trying to execute a simple class that hopefully will display the contents back to a JSP page. However, I am getting an “java.lang.NullPointerExeception”
At SQL.SQLGatewayServlet.doGet(SQLGatewayServlet.java:63)

Code:
package SQL;

import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import java.sql.*;
import util.*;

public class SQLGatewayServlet extends HttpServlet
{
	private Connection connection;
	private String file;
	private String dbDriver;
	private String dbURL;
	private String dbUser;
	private String dbPassword;

	public void init() throws ServletException
	{
		ServletConfig config = getServletConfig();
		file = config.getInitParameter("fileName");
		dbDriver = config.getInitParameter("jdbcDriver");
		dbURL = config.getInitParameter("dbUrl");
		dbUser = config.getInitParameter("username");
		dbPassword = config.getInitParameter("password");
		
		try
		{
			Class.forName(dbDriver);
			connection = DriverManager.getConnection(dbURL,dbUser,dbPassword);
		}
		catch (ClassNotFoundException e)
		{
			System.out.println("Database Driver Not Found ");
		}
		catch (SQLException e)
		{
			System.out.println("Error Opening the DB connection: " + e.getMessage());
		}
	}

	public void destroy()
	{
		try
		{
			connection.close();
		}
		catch (SQLException e)
		{
			System.out.println("Error closing the db connection: " + e.getMessage());
		}
	}

	public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
					  HttpServletResponse response)
					  throws IOException, ServletException
	{
		String sqlStatement = request.getParameter("sqlStatement");
		String message = "";

		try
		{			
			Statement statement = connection.createStatement();
			sqlStatement = sqlStatement.trim();
			String sqlType = sqlStatement.substring(0,6);

			if(sqlType.equalsIgnoreCase("select"))
			{
				ResultSet resultSet = statement.executeQuery(sqlStatement);
				message = SQLUtil.getHtmlRows(resultSet);
			}
			else
			{
				int i = statement.executeUpdate(sqlStatement);
				if(i == 0)
					message = "The statement executed successfully.";
				else
					message = "The statement executed successfully.<br/>" + i + "row(s) affected.";
			}
			statement.close();
		}
		catch(SQLException e)
		{
			message = "Error executing the SQL statement: <br>" + e.getMessage();
		}

		HttpSession session = request.getSession();
		session.setAttribute("message", message);
		session.setAttribute("sqlStatement", sqlStatement);

		RequestDispatcher dispatcher = getServletContext().getRequestDispatcher("/jsp/sql_gateway.jsp");
		dispatcher.forward(request, response);
	}

	public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,
					   HttpServletResponse response)
					   throws IOException, ServletException
	{
		doGet(request, response);
	}
}
Is the application getting the parameter from my jsp or am I overlooking something.
Thanks for any assistance in this area. It would be nice to have some sort of debugger for this stuff. Developing in C I can step through line by line. Don’t know how to do that using Java 


Best regards,

Steve…