RowSet characteristics

You can request certain properties to be satisfied by the rowsets. Common properties include the set of interfaces to be supported by the resulting rowset.

RowSets are ResultSets

The RowSet interface extends the ResultSet interface which means that RowSets have the ability to perform all the functions that ResultSets can do. For example, RowSets can be scrollable and updateable.

RowSets can be disconnected from the database

There are two categories of RowSets:

Connected While connected RowSets are populated with data, they always have internal connections to the underlying database open and serve as wrappers around a ResultSet implementation.
Disconnected Disconnected RowSets are not required to maintain connections to their data source at all times. Disconnected RowSets can be detached from the database, be used in a variety of ways, and then be reconnected to the database to mirror any changes made to them.

RowSets are JavaBeans™ components

RowSets have support for event handling based on the JavaBeans event-handling model. They also have properties that can be set. These properties can be used by the RowSet to perform the following:

Establish a connection to the database.
Process an SQL statement.
Determine features of the data that the RowSet represents and handle other internal features of the RowSet object.

RowSets are serializable

RowSets can be serialized and deserialized to allow them to flow over a network connection, be written out to a flat file (that is, a text document without any word processing or other structure characters), and so on.