Re: reference to variable fields in IBM copybooks

Scott Lindstrom wrote:

One specific item of caution -- If you're working with
QIBM_QZDA_SQL2 with the ZDAQ0200 format, ensure that you do NOT use
SQL-STATEMENT-TEXT2-LEN as your length field if it has a value
greater than 1024. You might want to declare a different field and
either move SQL-STATEMENT-TEXT2-LEN or 1024 into it depending on
whether SQL-STATEMENT-TEXT2-LEN is too big. Also, decide how to
handle a case where length is zero. Eventually you WILL run across
both conditions (among various interesting others).

Funny you should mention these. I had not yet updated the code to handle
len=0 or len>1024, and I came in day to see the dev system had experienced
each of these problems overnight.

Scott:

Because my employer offers commercial products in this area, I try to be a little cautious on how much I describe of "how it should be written". But that small bit was effectively guaranteed to show up in the near future as well as being obvious for potential fixes.

The _real_ fun is in the "(among various interesting others)" parts. There was a stretch of more than half a dozen DB2 group PTFs a while back that would alternately break or fix exit programs for example. With hundreds of customers on radically varying upgrade schedules... Well, we logged quite a few calls to IBM over many, many months.

Keep smiling!

Tom Liotta