SQL Escape Sequences

Language features, such as outer joins and scalar function calls, are commonly implemented by database systems. The syntax for these features is often database-specific, even when a standard syntax has been defined. ODBC and JDBC define escape sequences that contain standard syntaxes for the following language features:

Date, time, timestamp, and datetime literals
Scalar functions such as numeric, string, and data type conversion functions
Outer joins

The escape sequence is recognized and parsed by the driver, which replaces the escape sequences with data store-specific grammar.