diff --git a/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/SQLExec.java b/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/SQLExec.java
index 30bd9f520..aaf18a3b6 100644
--- a/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/SQLExec.java
+++ b/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/SQLExec.java
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ package org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs;
 import org.apache.tools.ant.BuildException;
 import org.apache.tools.ant.DirectoryScanner;
 import org.apache.tools.ant.Project;
+import org.apache.tools.ant.util.StringUtils;
 import org.apache.tools.ant.types.EnumeratedAttribute;
 import org.apache.tools.ant.types.FileSet;
 
@@ -441,7 +442,7 @@ public class SQLExec extends JDBCTask {
     protected void runStatements(Reader reader, PrintStream out)
         throws SQLException, IOException {
         StringBuffer sql = new StringBuffer();
-        String line = "";
+        String line;
 
         BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(reader);
 
@@ -481,7 +482,7 @@ public class SQLExec extends JDBCTask {
                 }
             }
             if ((delimiterType.equals(DelimiterType.NORMAL)
-                 && sql.toString().endsWith(delimiter))
+                 && StringUtils.endsWith(sql, delimiter))
                 ||
                 (delimiterType.equals(DelimiterType.ROW)
                  && line.equals(delimiter))) {
@@ -574,8 +575,7 @@ public class SQLExec extends JDBCTask {
      * @throws SQLException on SQL problems.
      */
     protected void printResults(PrintStream out) throws SQLException {
-        ResultSet rs = null;
-        rs = statement.getResultSet();
+        ResultSet rs = statement.getResultSet();
         try {
             printResults(rs, out);
         } finally {
diff --git a/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/util/StringUtils.java b/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/util/StringUtils.java
index 40acacb24..5141c64b2 100644
--- a/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/util/StringUtils.java
+++ b/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/util/StringUtils.java
@@ -98,4 +98,35 @@ public final class StringUtils {
         return sw.toString();
     }
 
+    /**
+     * Checks that a string buffer ends up with a given string. It may sound trivial with the existing
+     * JDK API but the various implementation among JDKs can make those methods extremely resource intensive
+     * and perform poorly due to massive memory allocation and copying. See
+     * @param buffer the buffer to perform the check on
+     * @param suffix the suffix
+     * @return  <code>true</code> if the character sequence represented by the
+     *          argument is a suffix of the character sequence represented by
+     *          the StringBuffer object; <code>false</code> otherwise. Note that the
+     *          result will be <code>true</code> if the argument is the
+     *          empty string.
+     */
+    public static boolean endsWith(StringBuffer buffer, String suffix) {
+        if (suffix.length() > buffer.length()) {
+            return false;
+        }
+        // this loop is done on purpose to avoid memory allocation performance problems on various JDKs
+        // StringBuffer.lastIndexOf() was introduced in jdk 1.4 and implementation is ok though does allocation/copying
+        // StringBuffer.toString().endsWith() does massive memory allocation/copying on JDK 1.5
+        // See http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=37169
+        int endIndex = suffix.length() - 1;
+        int bufferIndex = buffer.length() - 1;
+        while ( endIndex >= 0 ) {
+            if ( buffer.charAt(bufferIndex) != suffix.charAt(endIndex) ) {
+                return false;
+            }
+            bufferIndex--;
+            endIndex--;
+        }
+        return true;
+    }
 }
diff --git a/src/testcases/org/apache/tools/ant/util/StringUtilsTest.java b/src/testcases/org/apache/tools/ant/util/StringUtilsTest.java
index 16c3c0e8c..47ea2a86c 100644
--- a/src/testcases/org/apache/tools/ant/util/StringUtilsTest.java
+++ b/src/testcases/org/apache/tools/ant/util/StringUtilsTest.java
@@ -55,4 +55,51 @@ public class StringUtilsTest extends TestCase {
         assertEquals("bcbcbc", res);
     }
 
+    public void testEndsWithBothEmpty() {
+        assertTrue( StringUtils.endsWith( new StringBuffer(), "") );
+    }
+
+    public void testEndsWithEmptyString() {
+        assertTrue( StringUtils.endsWith( new StringBuffer("12234545"), "") );
+    }
+
+    public void testEndsWithShorterString() {
+        assertTrue( StringUtils.endsWith( new StringBuffer("12345678"), "78"));
+    }
+
+    public void testEndsWithSameString() {
+        assertTrue( StringUtils.endsWith( new StringBuffer("123"), "123"));
+    }
+
+    public void testEndsWithLongerString() {
+        assertFalse( StringUtils.endsWith( new StringBuffer("12"), "1245"));
+    }
+
+    public void testEndsWithNoMatch() {
+        assertFalse( StringUtils.endsWith( new StringBuffer("12345678"), "789"));
+    }
+
+    public void testEndsWithEmptyBuffer() {
+        assertFalse( StringUtils.endsWith( new StringBuffer(""), "12345667") );
+    }
+
+    public void testEndsWithJDKPerf() {
+        StringBuffer buf = getFilledBuffer(1024*300, 'a');
+        for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
+            assertTrue(buf.toString().endsWith("aa"));
+        }
+    }
+
+    public void testEndsWithPerf() {
+        StringBuffer buf = getFilledBuffer(1024*300, 'a');
+        for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
+            assertTrue(StringUtils.endsWith(buf, "aa"));
+        }
+    }
+
+    private StringBuffer getFilledBuffer(int size, char ch) {
+        StringBuffer buf = new StringBuffer(size);
+        for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) { buf.append(ch); };
+        return buf;
+    }
 }