ResultSet null column

[Keith_McCully@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

I have built a prepared statement that links data from 2 DB2/400 tables. Left
join is used because there will not always be a key matched row in table B but I
would always expect 1 row from table A.

PreparedStatement stmt1 = connection.prepareStatement("SELECT AFIELD1, AFIELD2,
BFIELD1, BFIELD2
     FROM A LEFT JOIN B ON AFIELD1 = BFIELD1 WHERE AFIELD1 = ?")

After I do a stmt1.executeQuery() into a ResultSet (rs) and then extract BFIELD2
as
     String FIELDX = rs.getString("BFIELD2").trim()
If a matched row in file B exists when I load FIELDX, then everything works fine
but ,if not ,then I get a NullPointerException.

I tried testing rs.getString for null prior to FIELDX load but no success.  Any
comments and suggestions on how to check for null would be very welcome!

Thanks,

Keith