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Special Variables

System-supplied variables.

Synopsis

$HOROLOG
$JOB
$NAMESPACE
$TLEVEL
$USERNAME
$ZHOROLOG
$ZJOB
$ZPI
$ZTIMESTAMP
$ZTIMEZONE
$ZVERSION

Description

InterSystems SQL directly supports a number of the ObjectScript special variables. These variables contain system-supplied values. They can be used wherever a literal value can be specified in InterSystems SQL.

SQL special variable names are not case-sensitive. Most can be specified using an abbreviation.

Variable Name Abbreviation Data Type Returned Use
$HOROLOG $H %String/VARCHAR Local date and time for the current process
$JOB $J %String/VARCHAR Job ID of the current process
$NAMESPACE none %String/VARCHAR Current namespace name
$TLEVEL $TL %Integer/INTEGER Current transaction nesting level
$USERNAME none %String/VARCHAR User name for the current process
$ZHOROLOG $ZH %Numeric/NUMERIC(21,6) Number of elapsed seconds since InterSystems IRIS startup
$ZJOB $ZJ %Integer/INTEGER Job status for the current process
$ZPI none %Numeric/NUMERIC(21,18) The numeric constant PI
$ZTIMESTAMP $ZTS %String/VARCHAR Current date and time in Coordinated Universal Time format
$ZTIMEZONE $ZTZ %Integer/INTEGER Local time zone offset from GMT
$ZVERSION $ZV %String/VARCHAR The current version of InterSystems IRIS

For further details, refer to the corresponding ObjectScript special variable, as described in the ObjectScript Reference.

Examples

The following example returns a result set that includes the current date and time:

SELECT TOP 5 Name,$H
FROM Sample.Person

The following example only returns a result set if the time zone is within the continental United States:

SELECT TOP 5 Name,Home_State
FROM Sample.Person
WHERE $ZTIMEZONE BETWEEN 300 AND 480
Purpose of this instance: Draft documentation
DocReleaseID: HealthConnect2025.1
Content loaded from:
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/staging/learning/iris-doc/2025.1.x/doc/healthconnect/en-us/src/
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