ASA SQL User's Guide
  Using Procedures, Triggers, and Batches
    Control statements

Declarations in compound statements

Local declarations in a compound statement immediately follow the BEGIN keyword. These local declarations exist only within the compound statement. Within a compound statement you can declare:

• Variables

• Cursors

• Temporary tables

• Exceptions (error identifiers)

Local declarations can be referenced by any statement in that compound statement, or in any compound statement nested within it. Local declarations are not visible to other procedures called from the compound statement.