Contents Index Executing SQL statements in applications How to use prepared statements

ASA Programming Guide
  Using SQL in Applications

Preparing statements


Each time a statement is sent to a database, the server must first prepare the statement. Preparing the statement can include:

Reusing prepared statements can improve performance 

If you find yourself using the same statement repeatedly, for example, inserting many rows into a table, repeatedly preparing the statement causes a significant and unnecessary overhead. To remove this overhead, some database programming interfaces provide ways of using prepared statements. A prepared statement is a statement containing a series of placeholders. When you want to execute the statement, all you have to do is assign values to the placeholders, rather than prepare the entire statement over again.

Using prepared statements is particularly useful when carrying out many similar actions, such as inserting many rows.

Generally, using prepared statements requires the following steps:

  1. Prepare the statement    In this step you generally provide the statement with some placeholder character instead of the values.

  2. Repeatedly execute the prepared statement    In this step you supply values to be used each time the statement is executed. The statement does not have to be prepared each time.

  3. Drop the statement    In this step you free the resources associated with the prepared statement. Some programming interfaces handle this step automatically.

Do not prepare statements that are used only once 

In general, you should not prepare statements if you'll only execute them once. There is a slight performance penalty for separate preparation and execution, and it introduces unnecessary complexity into your application.

In some interfaces, however, you do need to prepare a statement to associate it with a cursor.

For information about cursors, see Introduction to cursors.

The calls for preparing and executing statements are not a part of SQL, and they differ from interface to interface. Each of the Adaptive Server Anywhere programming interfaces provides a method for using prepared statements.


How to use prepared statements

Contents Index Executing SQL statements in applications How to use prepared statements