Lexical Conventions

The following lexical conventions for issuing SQL statements apply specifically to the Oracle AI Database implementation of SQL, but are generally acceptable in other SQL implementations.

When you issue a SQL statement, you can include one or more tabs, carriage returns, spaces, or comments anywhere a space occurs within the definition of the statement. Thus, the database evaluates the following two statements in the same manner:

SELECT last_name,salary*12,MONTHS_BETWEEN(SYSDATE,hire_date) 
  FROM employees
  WHERE department_id = 30
  ORDER BY last_name;

SELECT last_name,
  salary * 12,
        MONTHS_BETWEEN( SYSDATE, hire_date )
FROM employees
WHERE department_id=30
ORDER BY last_name;

Case is insignificant in reserved words, keywords, identifiers, and parameters. However, case is significant in text literals and quoted names. Refer to Text Literals for a syntax description of text literals.

Note:

SQL statements are terminated differently in different programming environments. This documentation set uses the default SQL*Plus character, the semicolon (;).