Define Variable
This section describes the declaration of variables in the PL/SQL and the scope of this variable in codes.
Variable Declaration
For details about the variable declaration syntax, see Figure 1.
The above syntax diagram is explained as follows:
- variable_name indicates the name of a variable.
- type indicates the type of a variable.
- value indicates the initial value of the variable. (If the initial value is not given, NULL is taken as the initial value.) value can also be an expression.
Examples
postgres=# DECLARE
emp_id INTEGER := 7788; -- Define a variable and assign a value to it.
BEGIN
emp_id := 5*7784; -- Assign a value to the variable.
END;
/
In addition to the declaration of basic variable types, %TYPE and %ROWTYPE can be used to declare variables related to table columns or table structures.
%TYPE Attribute
%TYPE declares a variable to be of the same data type as a previously declared variable (for example, a column in a table). For example, if you want to define a my_name variable whose data type is the same as the data type of the firstname column in the employee table, you can define the variable as follows:
my_name employee.firstname%TYPE
In this way, you can declare my_name without the need of knowing the data type of firstname in employee, and the data type of my_name can be automatically updated when the data type of firstname changes.
%ROWTYPE Attribute
%ROWTYPE declares data types of a set of data. It stores a row of table data or results fetched from a cursor. For example, if you want to define a set of data with the same column names and column data types as the employee table, you can define the data as follows:
my_employee employee%ROWTYPE
Scope of a Variable
The scope of a variable indicates the accessibility and availability of the variable in code block. In other words, a variable takes effect only within its scope.
- To define a function scope, a variable must declare and create a BEGIN-END block in the declaration section. The necessity of such declaration is also determined by block structure, which requires that a variable has different scopes and lifetime during a process.
- A variable can be defined multiple times in different scopes, and inner definition can cover outer one.
- A variable defined in an outer block can also be used in a nested block. However, the outer block cannot access variables in the nested block.