Literal Collection

Use the Literal Collection segment to specify values for a collection data type. For the syntax of expressions that return values of individual elements within a collection, see Collection Constructors.

Syntax


Literal Collection

|----+-SET------+--{-| Literal Data |-}-------------------------|
     +-MULTISET-+                           
     '-LIST-----'                           

Literal Data

   .-,------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.   
   V                             (1)                                                            |   
|----+-| Element Literal Value |--------------------------------------------------------------+-+--|
     |                            (2)                                                     (2) |     
     '-| Nested Quotation Marks |------| Literal Collection |--| Nested Quotation Marks |-----'

Notes:

See Element Literal Value
See Nested Quotation Marks

Usage

You can specify literal collection values for SET, MULTISET, or LIST data types.

To specify a single literal-collection value, specify the collection type and the literal values. The following SQL statement inserts four integer values into a column called set_col that was declared as SET(INT NOT NULL):

INSERT INTO table1 (set_col) VALUES (SET{6, 9, 9, 4});

Specify an empty collection with an empty pair of braces ( { } ) symbols. This example inserts an empty list into a column list_col that was declared as LIST(INT NOT NULL):

INSERT INTO table2 (list_col) VALUES ('LIST{}');

A pair of single ( ' ) or double ( " ) quotation marks can delimit the collection. Double quotation marks are not valid, however, in databases where delimited identifiers are enabled, except to delimit SQL identifiers.

If you are passing a literal collection as an argument to an SPL routine, make sure that there is a blank space between the parentheses that surround the arguments and quotation marks that indicate the beginning and end of the literal collection.