WebSphere Application Server Express ions

An expression specifies a value.

Conditional expressions can consist of comparison operators and logical operators (AND, OR, NOT).

Arithmetic expressions can be used in comparison expressions and can be composed of arithmetic operations and functions, path expressions that evaluate to a numeric value and numeric literals and numeric input parameters.

String expressions can be used in comparison expressions and can be composed of string functions, path expressions that evaluate to a string value and string literals and string input parameters. A CMP field of type char is handled as if it were a string of length 1.

Binary expressions can be used in comparison expressions and can be composed of path expressions that evaluate to the Java byte[] type as well as input parameters of type byte[].

Boolean expressions can be used with = and <> comparison and can be composed of path expressions that evaluate to a boolean value and TRUE and FALSE keywords and boolean input parameters.

Reference expressions can be used with = and <> comparison and can be composed of path expressions that evaluate to a cmr field, an identification variable and an input parameter whose type is an EJB reference

Four different expression types are supported for working with date-time types. For portability the java.util.Calendar type should be used. DB2 style date, time and timestamp expressions are supported if the datastore is DB2 and the CMP field is of type java.util.Date, java.sql.Date, java.sql.Time or java.sql.Timestamp. If we use DB2 UDB, you might obtain a syntax error when using the java.sql.Timestamp.ojbect. We must use the syntax TIMESTAMP 'yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.nnnn'.

A Calendar type can be compared to another Calendar type, an exact numeric literal or input parameter of type long whose value is the standard Java long millisecond value.

The following query finds all employees born before Jan 1, 1990:

SELECT OBJECT(e) FROM EmpBean e WHERE e.birthDate < 631180800232

Date expressions can be used in comparison expressions and can be composed of operators + - , date duration expressions and date functions, path expressions that evaluate to a date value, string representation of a date and date input parameters.

Time expressions can be used in comparison expressions and can be composed of operators + - , time duration expressions and time functions, path expressions that evaluate to a time value, string representation of time and time input parameters.

Timestamp expressions can be used in comparison expressions and can be composed of operators + - , timestamp duration expressions and timestamp functions, path expressions that evaluate to a timestamp value, string representation of a timestamp and timestamp input parameters.

Standard bracketing ( ) for ordering expression evaluation is supported.

The operators and their precedence order from highest to lowest are:

• Navigation operator ( . )

• Arithmetic operators in precedence order:

  • + - unary

  • * / multiply, divide

  • + - add, subtract

• Comparison operators: =, >, <, >=, <=, <>(not equal)

• Logical operator NOT

• Logical operator AND

• Logical operator OR

Subtopics

• Null value semantics
  The following describe the semantics of NULL values.

• Date time arithmetic and comparisons
  DATE, TIME and TIMESTAMP values can be compared with another value of the same type. Comparisons are chronological. Date time values can also be incremented, decremented, and subtracted.

Related concepts

EJB query language

WHERE clause

Related tasks

Use EJB query