Error selecting constant

I'm getting an error when selecting a constant through the jdbc driver
(it works fine with the psql command line).

I don't have access to the exact java code as this is just to do some
opennms trickery and my select is in the opennms config files, but I'm
getting the following.
I'd appreciate any clues as to whether there is a simple fix (ie
changing the query, not the code).

org.springframework.dao.DataRetrievalFailureException: Problem executing
statement: SELECT '?_?' as result with values [str1, str2]; nested
exception is org.postgresql.util.PSQLException: The column index is out
of range: 1, number of columns: 0.
Caused by: org.postgresql.util.PSQLException: The column index is out of
range: 1, number of columns: 0.
at
org.postgresql.core.v3.SimpleParameterList.bind(SimpleParameterList.java:57)
at
org.postgresql.core.v3.SimpleParameterList.setStringParameter(SimpleParameterList.java:121)
at
org.postgresql.jdbc2.AbstractJdbc2Statement.bindString(AbstractJdbc2Statement.java:2112)
at
org.postgresql.jdbc2.AbstractJdbc2Statement.setString(AbstractJdbc2Statement.java:1238)
at
org.postgresql.jdbc2.AbstractJdbc2Statement.setString(AbstractJdbc2Statement.java:1224)
at
org.postgresql.jdbc2.AbstractJdbc2Statement.setObject(AbstractJdbc2Statement.java:1698)
at
com.mchange.v2.c3p0.impl.NewProxyPreparedStatement.setObject(NewProxyPreparedStatement.java:365)
at
org.opennms.netmgt.utils.JDBCTemplate.doExecute(JDBCTemplate.java:110)
at
org.opennms.netmgt.utils.JDBCTemplate.execute(JDBCTemplate.java:84)
at
org.opennms.netmgt.config.EventTranslatorConfigFactory$SqlValueSpec.getResult(EventTranslatorConfigFactory.java:621)
at
org.opennms.netmgt.config.EventTranslatorConfigFactory$AssignmentSpec.apply(EventTranslatorConfigFactory.java:444)
at
org.opennms.netmgt.config.EventTranslatorConfigFactory$TranslationMapping.translate(EventTranslatorConfigFactory.java:373)
at
org.opennms.netmgt.config.EventTranslatorConfigFactory$TranslationSpec.translate(EventTranslatorConfigFactory.java:298)
at
org.opennms.netmgt.config.EventTranslatorConfigFactory.translateEvent(EventTranslatorConfigFactory.java:262)
at
org.opennms.netmgt.translator.EventTranslator.onEvent(EventTranslator.java:128)
at
org.opennms.netmgt.eventd.EventIpcManagerDefaultImpl$ListenerThread.run(EventIpcManagerDefaultImpl.java:189)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595)