Programming Guide - Actian

OpenROAD NamesThe rules for these names, also known as alphanumeric identifiers, are asfollows:• Names can contain up to 32 alphanumeric characters.• Names can begin only with an alphabetic character or an underscore (_).• Names can contain an underscore as well as other alphanumeric characters(including #, @, $, and 0 through 9).• Names are not case sensitive.Dynamic NamesA dynamic name is a name that you can use in a statement either dynamically(when you run the application) or statically (when you create the application).All dynamic names are underlined in the syntax examples in this guide. Twoexamples of dynamic names are table names and column names, for example:update tablename set columnname= expression{, columnname=expression} where current of cursor_variableBoth statically-specified and dynamically-specified dynamic names must followthese rules:• The variable that you use as a dynamic name can be a global variable orany variable in the current frame or procedure.To differentiate between a variable used as a dynamic name and analphanumeric identifier, put a dereferencing colon (:) before the dynamicname. A dereferencing colon preceding a dynamic name indicates that youare using the contents of a variable to supply the value for an OpenROADname.• If the variable is part of an object, put the colon before the full name, forexample:callframe :framearray[3].name;Do not place the colon in the middle of the name, for example:callframe framearray[3].:name;Also, in all SQL statements, the colon is required before variable names,for example:select from tbl where col1 = :value;Placing the colon before "value" makes the select compare the col1 columnwith the value of the variable value. If the colon were missing from thestatement, the select instead would compare the col1 column with acolumn named "value."20 Programming Guide