Re: Why are object names limited to 10 chars long?

At 09:08 09/09/1998 , Ravi wrote:
>In Oracle the table names can be quite descriptive. Why is the file name
>or any object name for that matter limited to 10 chars on the 400? When
>Windows went to 32 bit, longer file names were allowed. Has the 10 char
>restriction been carried over from the old days because of RPG
>restrictions? Can someone shed some light on this??

Actually, a table name can now be up to 128 characters, and allows blanks and 
mixed case as long as you enclose the name in quotes. This is an SQL name, so 
you must use SYSTABLES, SYSINDEXES, etc to manipulate it. The system still 
keeps an internal (system) name, which is 10 characters or less. If you create 
a table, view or index with a long name, the system name is generated 
transparently. BTW, I don't recommend using embedded blanks. They seem to 
confuse some Windows apps (MSQuery, Crystal Reports). Mixed case works fine 
though. You can also use long column names (aliases) of up to 30 characters 
when you design views. System names for these are also generated transparently. 
It's really only applications (and RPG) that don't support long names. The 
AS/400 handles them gracefully as long as you use the correct set of interfaces.

Pete Hall
peteh@inwave.com 
http://www.inwave.com/~peteh/

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