The complain is about backticks, right? Or you are expecting "select" to work as in your example. i.e Connection.prepareCall("select `f_one`()") ?

The documentation http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/sql/CallableStatement.html does not allow "selects", there are just 2 forms, with escape syntax, both use "call".

Quotes could be allowed, the docs are not specific on what constitutes a <procedure-name>

This is what I tried, which didn't work:

connection.prepareCall("{ ? = call `f_one` () }");

The JDBC spec reads:

> JDBC drivers may optionally provide support for invoking user-defined or vendor defined functions using the escape syntax for stored procedures.

From §13.4.4: http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/jcp/jdbc-4_2-mrel2-spec/jdbc4.2-fr-spec.pdf

A workaround is to ignore potential case-sensitivity, but I like to stay on the safe side, usually

Understood. That part in spec is not about DBMS specific rules for quotes, in my understanding. It is about using functions in place of stored procedures.
"Escape syntax for stored procedures" - sounds to me like JDBC/ODBC escapes, those with curly brackets, in the given context it would mean one of 2 variations of "

"

Well, in any case, the current driver is specs-compliant. On the other hand, I'm not aware of any database that doesn't allow the ordinary name quoting characters also in the JDBC/ODBC escape syntax, as this is the only way to enforce case-sensitivity (in some databases) or functions / procedures with special characters in their names (in all databases). Let me give you another, more obvious example:

CREATE FUNCTION `oop how to call this` ()

RETURNS INTEGER

BEGIN

  RETURN 1;

END

Without supporting backticks, how would you call this function?

This has been correction in 1.4 :
working example

        try (Statement st = sharedConnection.createStatement()) {

            st.execute("DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS `oop how to call this`");

            st.execute("CREATE FUNCTION `oop how to call this` (param int)\n" +

                    "RETURNS INTEGER\n" +

                    "BEGIN\n" +

                    "  RETURN 1;\n" +

                    "END");

            CallableStatement callableStatement = sharedConnection.prepareCall("{ ? = call `oop how to call this` (?) }");

            callableStatement.registerOutParameter(1, Types.INTEGER);

            callableStatement.setInt(2, 1);

            callableStatement.execute();

            System.out.println(callableStatement.getInt(1));

        }