Routines
BEGIN
Synopsis
BEGIN
[ DECLARE ... ]
statements
END
Description
Marks the start and end of a block in a SQL routine.
BEGIN
can be used wherever a statement can be used to group multiple
statements together and to declare variables local to the block. A typical use
case is as first statement within a function. Blocks can also be
nested.
After the BEGIN
keyword, you can add variable declarations using
declare statements, followed by one or more statements that define
the main body of the routine, separated by ;
. The following statements can be
used:
Examples
The following example computes the value 42
:
FUNCTION meaning_of_life()
RETURNS tinyint
BEGIN
DECLARE a tinyint DEFAULT 6;
DECLARE b tinyint DEFAULT 7;
RETURN a * b;
END
Further examples of varying complexity that cover usage of the BEGIN
statement
in combination with other statements are available in the SQL routines examples
documentation.