SQL Programming Manual for TAL

Host Variables and Parameters

HP NonStop SQL Programming Manual for TAL—527887-001

2-2

Declaring Host Variables

You declare host variables in a Declare Section in the variable declarations of your

program. You can use multiple Declare Sections in a TAL program, but you cannot nest

the sections. The SQL directives that delimit a Declare Section are BEGIN DECLARE

SECTION and END DECLARE SECTION.

Use TAL naming conventions for your host variables. Host variable names (and

indicator variable names):

•

Can contain from 1 to 31 alphanumeric characters including the circumflex (^) and

the underscore (_)

•

Must begin with a letter, circumflex, or underscore

To prevent naming conflicts, avoid ending your names with an underscore.

Examples of host variable declarations are:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;

! host variables

STRING .buffer[0:length];

INT number[0:9];

STRUCT .s^buffer;

BEGIN

INT buffer_length;

STRING text[0:2046];

END;

EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

For information about using the INVOKE directive to create host variables, see

Section 3, NonStop SQL Statements and Directives

Using Corresponding SQL and TAL Data Types

Table 2-1 on page 2-3 shows the corresponding NonStop SQL and TAL data types. If

you have an SQL data type shown in the left column and you want to send data to a

variable with that data type or receive data from a variable with that data type, declare

a TAL host variable as shown in the right column.