AntDB-Oracle Compatibility Developer’s Manual P4–1

Basic Components of SPL

This section discusses the most basic components needed to develop an SPL program.

character set

SPL programs use the following characters.

• Uppercase letters A through Z, lowercase letters a through b.

• The numbers 0 through 9.

• [ ]The symbols ( ) + - * / < > = ! ~ ^ ; : . ' @ % , " # $ & _ | { } ? .

• Tab key, space character and enter key.

The SPL language contains identifiers, expressions, statements, and control flow structures using the above characters.

Note: The data that can be manipulated by SPL programs is determined by the character set supported by the database encoding.

Case Sensitivity

As you can see from the following example: keywords and user-defined identifiers used in SPL programs are case-insensitive.

For example: DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Hello World'); can be equal to the following statements:

dbms_output.put_line('Hello World');
Dbms_Output.Put_Line('Hello World');
DBMS_output.Put_line('Hello World');

However, character and string constants and any data obtained from AntDB database or external data sources are case sensitive. The statement DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Hello World!'); produces the following output:

Hello World!

But the statement DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('HELLO WORLD!'); produces the following output:

HELLO WORLD!