The best solution is to use Connection.prepareStatement(String sql, int
autoGeneratedKeys) to create a prepared statement:

  String sqlString = "INSERT INTO country(countryCode,countryName)
   VALUES(?,?)";

  PreparedStatement pstmt = conn.prepareStatement(sqlString,
      Statement.RETURN_GENERATED_KEYS);

assuming that your table has columns named countryCode and countryName
to store the country code and name respectively.

Then insert a row using code such as

  pstmt.setString(1, country.getCode());
  pstmt.setString(2, country.getName());

  int rc = pstmt.executeUpdate();

  // rc is the number of rows actually inserted

and retrieve the auto_increment value generated by the server like this:

  ResultSet rs = pstmt.getGeneratedKeys();

  int sid = rs.next() ? rs.getInt(1) : -1;

  rs.close();

The use of a prepared statement is also preferable to hard-coding quotes
into an SQL query string as you did in your code snippet.

You can also re-use the prepared statement to insert further rows, for
as long as the parent connection remains open.  All in all, prepared
statements are a more elegant, flexible and secure approach, as well as
providing a convenient way to get auto_increment values.

David Harper
Cambridge, England