13.6.3 DECLARE Statement

The DECLARE statement is used to define various items local to a program:

Local variables. See Section 13.6.4, “Variables in Stored Programs”.
Conditions and handlers. See Section 13.6.7, “Condition Handling”.
Cursors. See Section 13.6.6, “Cursors”.

DECLARE is permitted only inside a BEGIN ... END compound statement and must be at its start, before any other statements.

Declarations must follow a certain order. Cursor declarations must appear before handler declarations. Variable and condition declarations must appear before cursor or handler declarations.