The basic symbols of keywords and operators in the SQL
language are single-byte characters12 that are part of all
character sets supported by the IBM® relational database products. Characters
of the language are classified as letters, digits, or special characters.
A letter is any of the 26 uppercase (A through
Z) and 26 lowercase (a through z) letters of the English alphabet. 13
A digit is any of the characters 0 through 9.
A special character is any of the characters listed
below:
|
space or blank |
- |
minus sign |
| " |
quotation mark or double-quote or double
quotation mark |
. |
period |
| % |
percent |
/ |
slash |
| & |
ampersand |
: |
colon |
| ' |
apostrophe or single quote or single quotation
mark |
; |
semicolon |
| ( |
left parenthesis |
< |
less than |
| ) |
right parenthesis |
= |
equals |
| * |
asterisk |
> |
greater than |
| + |
plus sign |
? |
question mark |
| , |
comma |
_ |
underline or underscore |
| | |
vertical bar15 |
^ |
caret |
| ! |
exclamation mark14 |
[ |
left bracket |
| { |
left brace |
] |
right bracket |
| } |
right brace |
¬ |
not 14 |
Note that if the SQL statement is encoded as Unicode
data, all characters of the statement except for string constants will be
converted to single-byte characters prior to processing. Tokens representing
string constants may be processed as UTF-16 graphic strings without conversion
to single-byte.
Letters
also include three code points reserved as alphabetic extenders for national
languages (#, @, and $ in the United States). These three code points should
be avoided because they represent different characters depending on the CCSID.
Using the vertical bar (|) character might inhibit code portability
between IBM relational database products. It is preferable to use the CONCAT
operator instead of the concatenation operator (||). Use of the vertical bar
should be avoided because it is a variant character.
Using the not symbol (¬) and the exclamation
point symbol (!) might inhibit code portability between IBM relational database
products. Avoid using them because they are variant characters. Instead of ¬=
or != use <>. Instead of ¬> or !> use <=. Instead of ¬<
or !< use >=.
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