Here is an example snippet. This uses an Oracle database. The ResultSet.next() method iterates through the records returned.
JTextArea textArea1 = new JTextArea(10, 50);
String query = "select emp_name, emp_id from employee order by emp_name";
Connection con = null;
Statement stmnt = null;
ResultSet rs = null;
try {
DriverManager.registerDriver (new oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver());
con = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc

racle:thin

oraclehost:1521:sid", "username", "password"

;
stmnt = con.createStatement();
rs = stmnt.executeQuery(query);
while(rs.next()){
textArea1.append(rs.getString("emp_name"

);
textArea1.append(" "

;
textArea1.append(rs.getString("emp_id"

);
textArea1.append(System.line.separator);
}
if(stmnt != null){
stmnt.close();
}
if(con != null){
con.close();
}
}
catch(SQLException e){
System.out.println("Error with database retrieval"

;
}