Conventions Used

Many examples of DB2 UDB administrative commands and SQL statements can be found throughout this book. The following conventions are used whenever a DB2 command or SQL statement is presented:

[ ]	Parameters or items shown inside of brackets are required and must be provided.
< >	Parameters or items shown inside of angle brackets are optional and do not have to be provided.
	Vertical bars are used to indicate that one (and only one) item in the list of items presented can be specified.
,...	A comma followed by three periods (ellipsis) indicate that multiple instances of the preceding parameter or item can be included in the DB2 command or SQL statement.

The following examples illustrate each of these conventions:

Example 1

 REFRESH TABLE [  TableName  ,...] <INCREMENTAL  NON INCREMENTAL> 

In this example, at least one TableName value must be provided, as indicated by the brackets ([ ]), and more than one TableName value can be provided, as indicated by the comma-ellipsis (,...) characters that follow the TableName parameter. INCREMENTAL and NON INCREMENTAL are optional, as indicated by the angle brackets (< >), and either one or the other can be specified, but not both, as indicated by the vertical bar ().

Example 2

 CREATE SEQUENCE [  SequenceName  ] <AS [SMALLINT  INTEGER  BIGINT  DECIMAL]> <START WITH [  StartingNumber  ]> <INCREMENT BY [1  Increment  ]> <NO MINVALUE  MINVALUE [  MinValue  ]> <NO MAXVALUE  MAXVALUE [  MaxValue  ]> <NO CYCLE  CYCLE> <NO CACHE  CACHE 20  CACHE [  CacheValue  ]> <NO ORDER  ORDER> 

In this example, a SequenceName value must be provided, as indicated by the brackets ([ ]). However, everything else is optional, as indicated by the angle brackets (< >), and in many cases, a list of available option values is provided (for example, NO CYCLE and CYCLE); however, only one can be specified, as indicated by the vertical bar (). In addition, when some options are provided (for example, START WITH, INCREMENT BY, MINVALUE, MAXVALUE, and CACHE), a corresponding value must be provided, as indicated by the brackets ([ ]) that follow the option.

SQL is not a case-sensitive language, so even though most of the examples provided are shown in uppercase, they can be entered in any case.