Jak propojit MySQL s Javou?

Měli byste dostat NPE. Při provádění dotazu na dbCon a ne na dbcon

// initialize here
Connection dbcon = DriverManager.getConnection(  
                "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/EMPLOYEE", "root", "root");  

String query ="select count(*) from EMPLOYEE4 ";

// Null here
Connection dbCon = null;

// on dbCon which is null 
stmt = dbCon.prepareStatement(query);

UPRAVIT

Takto by měl váš kód vypadat.

Connection dbcon = DriverManager.getConnection(  
                    "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/EMPLOYEE", "root", "root"); 
String query = "select count(*) from EMPLOYEE4 ";
Statement stmt = dbcon.createStatement();
ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery(query);