The SQL communication area (SQLCA)

The SQL communication area is one of the most important blocks. It contains information about the status of one SQL statement. For diagnostic purposes, up to 4 KB of the SQL statement are included in both the formatted and unformatted sections of SVC dumps.

The SQLCA also contains the SQLSTATE, which is a five character return code for the outcome of the most recent execution of an SQL statement. The range of values is '00000' through '65535'. SQLSTATE provides application programs with common codes for common error conditions (the values of SQLSTATE are product-specific only if the error or warning is product-specific). Furthermore, SQLSTATE is designed so that application programs can test for specific errors or classes of errors. The coding scheme is the same for all database managers and is consistent with the proposed ISO/ANSI SQL92 standard.