Internally, PowerBuilder processes DELETE, INSERT, and UPDATE statements the same way. PowerBuilder inspects them for any PowerScript variable references and replaces all references with a constant that conforms to Oracle rules for the data type.
Assume you enter the following statement:
DELETE FROM employee WHERE emp_id = :emp_id_var;
In this example, emp_id_var is a PowerScript variable with the data type of integer that has been defined within the scope of the script that contains the DELETE statement. Before the DELETE statement is executed, emp_id_var is assigned a value (say 691) so that when the DELETE statement executes, the database receives the following statement:
DELETE FROM employee WHERE emp_id = 691;
This variable substitution technique is used for all PowerScript variable types. When you use embedded SQL, precede all PowerScript variables with a colon ( : ).
