SQL Bible, Second Edition

Appendix I. SQL-Reserved Keywords

With a limited vocabulary, SQL is a relatively efficient language (comparedto many other programming languages); the SQL:2003 standard defines about 300 keywords out of which vendors have so far implemented only a small subset.

Oracle 11 g lists more than 100 keywords (and many more used in PL/SQL and database administration commands and flags; the full list of the reserved keywords in Oracle 11 g could be retrieved from V$RESERVED_WORDS view), IBM DB2 9.5 has more than 300 keywords, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 reserves more than 200 keywords. Most of the vendor-reserved keywords are found in the SQL:2003 standard, but many more exist. None of these reserved words should be used as a variable identifier; such use would affect the portability of your SQL code. On some systems, doing so will generate an error (SQLSTATE 42939). Fortunately, many GUI-based SQL editors (for example, Microsoft Query Analyzer, TOAD, WinSQL, and so on) highlight the keywords of the particular dialect.

Note

In addition to keywords listed here, each vendor also has a list of keywords reserved for future use. These lists are constantly updated. Refer to the particular RDBMS documentation.

I SQL-Reserved Keywords

SQL:2003 standard reserved keywords:

ABS CHARACTER CURRENT_USER ALL CHAR_LENGTH CURSOR ALLOCATE CHARACTER_LENGTH CYCLE ALTER CHECK DATE AND CLOB DAY ANY CLOSE DEALLOCATE ARE COALESCE DEC ARRAY COLLATE DECIMAL AS COLLECT DECLARE ASENSITIVE COLUMN DEFAULT ASYMMETRIC COMMIT ...