if you read the JDBC spec and look at table B-3 in the appendix, it
should be Integer, not Short.
it's confusing, because the 'preferred method' of retrieving a SMALLINT
is getShort(), and the preferred associated data type is short.
However, for getObject(), it should return an Integer.
sorry for not providing a patch, but it's been awhile since I've
touched cvs/patch and I don't have a ton of time right now...