Progress
SQL-92
Guide and Reference


DESCRIBE Statement

Writes information about a prepared statement to the SQL Descriptor Area (SQLDA). You use a DESCRIBE statement in a series of steps that allows a program to accept SQL-92 statements at run time. Dynamically generated statements are not part of a program's source code; they are generated at run time.

There are two forms of the DESCRIBE statement:

SYNTAX

DESCRIBE  [  BIND VARIABLES  |  SELECT LIST  ]  FOR statement_name
   INTO input_sqlda_name ;  

The SQLDA is a host language data structure used in dynamic SQL-92 processing. DESCRIBE statements write information about the number, data types, and sizes of input variables or select list items to SQLDA structures. Program logic then processes that information to allocate storage. OPEN, EXECUTE, and FETCH statements read the SQLDA structures for the addresses of the allocated storage.

For more information see the DESCRIBE BIND VARIABLES Statement and the DESCRIBE SELECT LIST Statement.


Copyright © 2004 Progress Software Corporation
www.progress.com
Voice: (781) 280-4000
Fax: (781) 280-4095