SQL Reference

DB2 Call Level Interface (CLI)

The DB2 Call Level Interface is an application programming interface in which functions are provided to application programs to process dynamic SQL statements. Through the interface, applications use procedure calls at execution time to connect to databases, to issue SQL statements, and to get returned data and status information. Unlike using embedded SQL, no precompilation is required. Applications developed using this interface may be executed on a variety of databases without being compiled against each of the databases.

The DB2 CLI interface provides many features not available in embedded SQL. A few of these are:

CLI provides function calls which support a consistent way to query and retrieve database system catalog information across the DB2 family of database management systems. This reduces the need to write database server specific catalog queries.
Application programs written using CLI can have multiple concurrent connections to the same database.
CLI provides support for scrollable cursors.
Stored procedures called from application programs written using CLI can return result sets to those programs.

For a comparison between the features of CLI and Embedded Dynamic SQL, see Road Map to DB2 Programming.

The CLI Guide and Reference describes the APIs supported with this interface.

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