The throws documentation can be really important. I recently ran into something for the API for a JDBC ResultSet. From the signature, and description, it would

The throws documentation can be really important. I recently ran into something for the API for a JDBC ResultSet. From the signature, and description, it would seem to be fine to call on a forward only result set, as long as you haven't moved past the first row yet. But in the throws section it says that if the result set is TYPE_FORWARD_ONLY, then it will throw a SQLException. And to make things more fun, not all drivers throw that exception, so it might work fine, until you switch drivers, or even upgrade your driver.