<a title="TheServerSide.com J2EE Community – SQLExecutor – A Simple, Open Source JDBC Framework is explained in this serverside article. It is a light weight, open source JDBC framework that makes it easier to write concise, readable, and database independent JDBC code. SQLExecutor automatically translates checked exceptions such as SQLException into unchecked (runtime) exceptions, enabling you to catch only those exceptions you want to catch. And instead of littering your program with database specific code that checks for arcane SQL error codes, you can call methods that abstract away the specifics of a particular database. For example, instead of checking to see if the SQL error code is 1407, you can call a method like isDataIntegrityViolation(). SQLExecutor also provides a simplified interface to transaction management, connection pooling, and stored procedure/function calls.

Now that sounds interesting for those cases were you don't want/can use a O/R mapping framework like castor.