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#### Expressing Literals A literal is a non-null value corresponding to a given data type. Literals are typically constant values; that is, they are values that are taken literally as is, without changing them at all. A literal value has to comply with the data type that it represents. This section describes how to express each type of literal. ### Character Literals A character literal contains characters such as letters, numbers and symbols. To express a character literal, enclose the character string within single quotes ( ' ). The length of the literal is determined by the number of characters between the single quotes. ### Datetime Literals The SQL 92 standard defines three kinds of typed date time literals in the following formats: DATE 'yyyy-MM-dd' TIME 'hh:MM:ss' TIMESTAMP 'yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss' These formats are fixed. To express a typed date time literal, use the keywords DATE, TIME, or TIMESTAMP followed by a date time string enclosed in single quote marks. Two digits are required for all non-year components even if the value is a single digit. Example: CASE WHEN Opportunity."Close Date" >= TIMESTAMP '2006-01-01 00:00:00' THEN '2006' ELSE 'Pre-2006' END ### Numeric Literals A numeric literal represents a value of a numeric data type. To express a numeric literal, simply include the number. Do not enclose numeric literals within single quotes; doing so expresses the literal as a character literal. A number can be preceded with either a plus sign (+) or minus sign (-) to indicate a positive or negative number, respectively. Numbers can contain a decimal point and decimal numbers. To express floating point numbers as literal constants, enter a number followed by the letter E (either uppercase or lowercase) and followed by the plus sign (+) or the minus sign (-) to indicate a positive or negative exponent. No spaces are allowed between the integer, the letter E, and the sign of the exponent. Examples: 52 2.98 -326 12.5E6

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