exerpt from
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/jorajdbc/chapter/ch19.html
"Statement Versus PreparedStatement
There's a popular belief that using a PreparedStatement object is
faster than using a Statement object. After all, a prepared statement
has to verify its metadata against the database only once, while a
statement has to do it every time. So how could it be any other way?
Well, the truth of the matter is that it takes about 65 iterations of
a prepared statement before its total time for execution catches up
with a statement. This has performance implications for your
application, and exploring these issues is what this section is all
about.
When it comes to which SQL statement object performs better under
typical use, a Statement or a PreparedStatement, the truth is that the
Statement object yields the best performance. When you consider how
SQL statements are typically used in an application--1 or 2 here,
maybe 10-20 (rarely more) per transaction--you realize that a
Statement object will perform them in less time than a
PreparedStatement object."