An ODBC escape clause is a way to talk to the ODBC driver you are using in a DBMS independent manner. The escape clause is represented by a pair of curly braces ({}) surrounding the standard form of the SQL syntax and a one- character or two-character token that specifies the type of the escape clause.

For example, if you want to specify a date value and you don't know which ODBC driver you will be using, you can use the Escape clause in this construct, {d 'yyyy-mm-dd'} and it will be translated by the ODBC driver manager into the form the backend can utilize. The following select statement will work with any ODBC driver: "SELECT * FROM table1 WHERE datefield = {d '1995-09-12'}" There are also other areas where you can use ODBC escape clauses:

Date and Time

   Date      {d 'yyyy-mm-dd'}
   Time      {t 'hh:mm:ss'}
   Timestamp   {ts 'yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss[.f...]'}
    

where [.f...] allows you to specify fractions of a second if you wish.

Stored Procedures

For stored procedures a parameter marker (?) must be used for the return value (if any) and any output arguments because it is bound to a program variable. Input arguments can be either literals or parameters, for example, "{? = call procedure_name(arg1, arg2, ?)}" or "{call procedure_name(arg1, arg2, ?)}".

String Functions

ASCII(), CHAR(), CONCAT(), DIFFERENCE(), INSERT(), LCASE(), LEFT(), LENGTH(), LOCATE(), LTRIM(), REPEAT(), REPLACE(), RIGHT(), RTRIM(), SOUNDEX(), SPACE(), SUBSTRING() and UCASE().

This example will retrieve a resultset where the first three characters of author field is 'dat' from the Pubs database. "Select * from authors where {fn LEFT(author, 3)} = 'dat'".

This example will retrieve a resultset with the author field all in uppercase letters. It is necessary to alias the column with the phrase "as AUTHORS" because the RDC control doesn't know what you are asking for in an escape clause so if you do not alias the column, the RDC control will refer to is as "Expr1000". MSRDC1.SQL = "Select {fn UCASE(author)} as AUTHORS from authors"

Math Functions

ABS(), ACOS(), ASIN(), ATAN(), ATAN2(), CEILING(), COS(), COT(), DEGREES(), EXP(), FLOOR(), LOG(), LOG10(), MOD(), PI(), POWER(), RADIANS(), RAND(), ROUND(), SIGN(), SIN(), SQRT(), TAN() and TRUNCATE().

System Functions

DATABASE(), IFNULL() and USER().

This example returns all the orders entered by the current user: "Select ordnum From orders Where employee = {fn User()}".

Time and Date Functions

CURDATE(), CURTIME(), DAYNAME(), DAYOFMONTH(), DAYOFWEEK(), DAYOFYEAR(), HOUR(), MINUTE(), MONTH(), MONTHNAME(), NOW(), QUARTER(), SECOND() and TIMESTAMPADD()

Data Type Conversion Functions

The data type conversion function converts a data type to a different data type on the server. This example shows the simple conversion of a date column to a character string. It also shows how powerful the use of scalar functions in expressions can be. In this case, the query returns all orders made in the 1990s "Select ordnum From orders Where {fn convert(orddate, SQL_CHAR)} like '199%'".

For complete documentation see the "Microsoft ODBC 2.0 Programmer's Reference and SDK Guide."