Physical Database DDL Statements › Components of a Physical DDL Statement

Components of a Physical DDL Statement

Keywords, Values, and Separators

Physical DDL statements consist of:

• Keywords
• User-supplied values that:
  • Identify specific occurrences of entities (for example, the EMP_BUFF database buffer)
  • Specify data values (for example, 983 or 'Boston')
• Separators that separate keywords and user-supplied values from one another. A separator can be a space, a comment, or a new-line character (for example, [Enter]).

Where Separators Are Not Required

Separators are not required before or after a character string literal or any of the following symbols:

Clauses in Syntax Statements Are Not Positional

The clauses in the syntax statements that appear in this chapter are not positional. That is, you can code the clauses in any order.

Verb Synonyms

The following table summarizes synonyms for the verbs CREATE, ALTER, DROP, and ADD: