third step at defining type sid in sqlcreate

Question

Third Step at defining type SID in SQL

CREATE DOMAIN SID AS VARCHAR(5)

CHECK ( VALUE IS NOT NULL AND

SUBSTRING(VALUE FROM 1 FOR 1) = 'S' AND

CAST('+'||SUBSTRING(VALUE FROM 2) AS INTEGER) >= 0 );

Explanation:

1. DOMAIN SID announces that a domain named SID is being defined to the system.
2. AS VARCHAR(5) specifies that values in domain SID are certain values of type VARCHAR(5).
3. CHECK ( ... ) specifies a constraint defining exactly which values of type VARCHAR(5) are in the domain SID. Note that the key word VALUE, which is available only in domain constraints, refers (in this particular example) to an arbitrary value of type VARCHAR(5).
4. VALUE IS NOT NULL specifies that the null value of type VARCHAR(5) is not a value in the domain. This is needed because the other conjuncts evaluate to UNKNOWN if VALUE is the null value and a domain constraint is deemed to be violated only when it evaluates to FALSE.
5. SUBSTRING(VALUE FROM 1 FOR 1) = 'S' specifies that every value in the domain must begin with S. Note SQL's deliberate use of "noise" words in the invocation of SUBSTRING, the justification for which is to distinguish invocations of system-defined operators from those of user-defined ones.
6. CAST('+'||SUBSTRING(VALUE FROM 2) AS INTEGER) >= 0 is an attempt to emulate an invocation of IS_DIGITS, perhaps showing how a user-defined operator of that name might be implemented in SQL. The character "+" is concatenated to the putatively numeric portion of the string in order to exclude values such as 'S+123' from the domain (the string '+123' can be cast as an integer but '++123' cannot).