SQL to Class Name Transformations

SQL to Class Name Transformations

When you use DDL to create a stored procedure, the name you specify is transformed into a class name. If the class does not exist, the system creates it.

• If the name is unqualified and no FOR clause is provided: the system-wide default schema name is used as the package name, followed by a dot, followed by a generated class name consisting of the string ‘func’, ‘meth’, ‘proc’, or ‘query’, followed by the SQL name stripped of punctuation characters. For example, the unqualified procedure name Store_Name results in a class name such as the following: User.procStoreName. This procedure class contains the method StoreName().

• If the name is qualified and no FOR clause is provided: the name of the schema is converted to a package name, followed by a dot, followed by the string ‘func’, ‘meth’, ‘proc’, or ‘query’, followed by the SQL name stripped of punctuation characters. If necessary, the specified package name is converted to a valid package name.

  If the name is qualified and a FOR clause is provided: the qualified class name specified in the FOR clause overrides the schema name specified in the function, method, procedure, or query name.

• SQL stored procedure names follow identifier naming conventions. InterSystems IRIS strips punctuation characters from the SQL name to generate unique class entity names for the procedure class and its class methods.

The following rules govern the transformation of a schema name to valid package name:

• If the schema name contains an underscore, this character is converted to a dot, denoting a subpackage. For example, the qualified name myprocs.myname creates the package myprocs. The qualified name my_procs.myname creates the package my containing the subpackage procs.

The following example shows how the punctuation differs in a class name and its SQL invocation. It defines a method with a class name containing two dots. When invoked from SQL, the example replace the first dot with an underscore character:

Class Sample.ProcTest Extends %RegisteredObject 
 {  ClassMethod myfunc(dummy As %String) As %String [ SqlProc ] 
    { /* method code */
      Quit "abc" }
 }  

SELECT Sample.ProcTest_myfunc(Name)
FROM Sample.Person