Definition: embedded SQL

SQL statements that are written into a high-level programming language such as C or Pascal. In a preprocessing stage, the SQL code is converted into function calls, which may be optimized to provide the fastest results. If the programmer knows exactly what the query is going to do, and the query does not change, it is called "static SQL." If the query requires user input at runtime, it is called "dynamic SQL." If the client program passes the SQL statements directly to the database server without any intermediate step, it is called "passthrough SQL."