The DECLARE Statement

Statements of the form:

exec sql
   DECLARE :host-var1[, :host-var2, :host-varN] VARIABLE FOR BIT DATA
   ...
end-exec

are permitted and are treated as comments.

Statements of the form:

exec sql
   DECLARE host-var1[, host-var2, host-varN] VARIABLE FOR BIT DATA
   ...
end-exec

instruct the DB2 ECM to not do ASCII/EBCDIC translation on the specified host variable(s).