If a parameter value for a system procedure contains punctuation or embedded blanks, or is a reserved word, you must enclose it in single or double quotes. If the parameter is an object name qualified by a database name or owner name, enclose the entire name in single or double quotes.
Do not use delimited identifiers as system procedure
parameters; they may produce unexpected results.
If a procedure has multiple optional parameters, you can supply parameters in the following form instead of supplying all the parameters:
@parametername = value
The parameter names in the syntax statements match the parameter names defined by the procedures.
For example, the syntax for sp_addlogin is:
sp_addlogin login_name, password [, defdb [, deflanguage [, fullname]]]
To use sp_addlogin to create a login for “susan” with a password of “wonderful”, a full name of Susan B. Anthony, and the server’s default database and language, you can use:
sp_addlogin susan, wonderful, @fullname="Susan B. Anthony"
This provides the same information as the command with all the parameters specified:
sp_addlogin susan, wonderful, public_db, us_english, "Susan B. Anthony"
You can also use “null” as a placeholder:
sp_addlogin susan, wonderful, null, null, "Susan B. Anthony"
Do not enclose “null” in quotes.
SQL has no rules about the number of words you can put on a line or where you must break a line. If you issue a system procedure followed by a command, Adaptive Server attempts to execute the system procedure, then the command. For example, if you execute the following command, Adaptive Server returns the output from sp_help, then runs the checkpoint command:
sp_help checkpoint
If you specify more parameters than the number of parameters expected by the system procedure, the extra parameters are ignored by Adaptive Server.
