Re: Received FTP files have TYPE P

On 20-Apr-2016 10:12 -0500, Justin Dearing wrote:

On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 9:31 AM CRPence wrote:

An SQL TABLE is recorded as having the attribute 'TB', in the
field DBXATR of file QADBXREF of the System Database
Cross-Reference [defined with
TEXT('PF-physical,LF-logical,TB-table,VW-view,IX-index')], and all
other non-SQL Physical Files are designated as having the
attribute 'PF'. Thus both a non-described PF and a DDS-described PF
appear as 'P', and a SQL-DDL-described TABLE PF appear as 'T', in
the SYSTABLES VIEW; each one-character value designation, being
derived from the expression SUBSTR(DBXATR, 1, 1) that defines the
TABLE_TYPE FOR TYPE column of that SQL catalog VIEW.

I've noticed the P versus T thing looking at qsys2.systables, and
its nice to know the internal metadata that that gets derived from.
That being said, is there any practical difference? Can I not add as
second member to TB or execute an ALTER TABLE on a PF? It seems like
that differentiation in the meta data is mostly forensic.

There are practical\important [and some just notable] differences between a SQL TABLE and a non-SQL PF, One can *not* in fact, add a second member to a SQL TABLE [except as a partition], whereas any non-SQL PF can have members added up to the maximum (MAXMBRS); other than as a side effect of restore, there is no method to remove the one member of a SQL TABLE whereas any PF can have all members removed. One *can* ALTER TABLE on a DDS-described PF, but the effect may be a SQL TABLE vs a non-SQL PF; e.g. adding an IDENTITY, for which only the 'TB' supports -- yet another example, of an important\notable difference.