I have a small web app that updates various PostgreSQL tables. I recently updated from Fedora 14 to Fedora 18 and as a result PostgreSQL was updated and I expect JDK as well.
All of a sudden I notice I couldn’t update rows which contained strings when the strings had single quotes in them.
I just got back the cryptic error message:

ERROR: syntax error at or near "\" at character 304

The JSP code looks like:

	  Connection conn;
      String connectionString="jdbc:postgresql://"  + dbServer + ":" + dbPort + "/" +  dbInstance;
      Statement s;
          
      
      int lenstr = newdescription.length();
      String prtlenstr = Integer.toString(lenstr);
      queryString = "update knowbase set "+(char)34+"DESCRIPTION"+(char)34+" = ?, "+(char)34;
      queryString += "SUBJECT"+(char)34+" = ?, "+(char)34+"PRODUCTID"+(char)34+" = ?, ";
      queryString += (char)34+"PRIVATE"+(char)34+" = ?";
      queryString = queryString + " where rtrim("+(char)34+"TIMESTAMP"+(char)34+") = rtrim('" + tstamp + "')";
      queryStringLongSave = queryString;
      try {
         DriverManager.registerDriver(new org.postgresql.Driver());
         conn=DriverManager.getConnection(connectionString, dbUserName, dbPassword );
          
         PreparedStatement pstat = conn.prepareStatement( queryString );
         java.io.ByteArrayInputStream bais = null;
         bais = new java.io.ByteArrayInputStream(newdescription.getBytes());
         pstat.setAsciiStream(1, bais, bais.available());
         pstat.setString(2, newsubject);
         pstat.setInt(3, newproductid);
         pstat.setInt(4, newprivate);
         pstat.executeUpdate();
      }
      catch(Exception e){
         updateExeception = "<br>Error results.jsp e =" + e.getMessage() + "<br><br>";
      };

Resolution

After a very long time of searching and a fair share of guesswork it turned out all I needed to do was upgrade my PostgreSQL JDBC drivers to the latest to match the DB version.