Informix Error -670

Reasons / Common Causes

-670 fires when an SPL procedural variable is declared with SERIAL/SERIAL8/BIGSERIAL — per the official guidance, these types are meaningful only for table columns (where the server auto-generates the value); they aren't legal types for a procedural variable.

1. DEFINE var SERIAL/SERIAL8/BIGSERIAL, per the official guidance — the direct, only cause.
2. A variable declared to match a table column's type directly, carrying over the column's SERIAL family type without realizing procedural variables need the corresponding plain integer type instead.

Solutions / Resolution

1. Use INTEGER/INT8/BIGINT instead, per the official guidance — matching SERIAL→INTEGER, SERIAL8→INT8, BIGSERIAL→BIGINT.
2. If the variable is meant to hold a value read from a SERIAL-family column, declare it as the corresponding plain integer type, since that's what actually gets stored in the variable once fetched — the auto-generation behavior is a column-level property, not something the variable itself needs to carry.

Examples

The disallowed declaration

CREATE PROCEDURE get_order_id()
  RETURNING SERIAL;
  DEFINE v_id SERIAL;
  -- -670: SERIAL isn't a legal procedure/variable type
  ...
END PROCEDURE;

Corrected

CREATE PROCEDURE get_order_id()
  RETURNING INTEGER;
  DEFINE v_id INTEGER;
  ...
END PROCEDURE;

Diagnostic Checks

1. Scan DEFINE/RETURNING declarations for SERIAL/SERIAL8/BIGSERIAL, and replace each with its corresponding plain integer type (INTEGER/INT8/BIGINT).

Related Errors / Related Topics

• -593 — "Cannot specify default value for SERIAL or SERIAL8 or BIGSERIAL column." A related restriction on SERIAL-family types, in the table-column context rather than procedural variables.

SERIAL/SERIAL8/BIGSERIAL are column-only types — use INTEGER/INT8/BIGINT for procedural variables and return types.