Re: VARLEN field... what good are they?

Œ
Hello Brad,

Exactly how did you specify the VARLEN keyword?  You should specify an 
allocated length for the 
normally expected amount of data and let the unusual excess spill over into the 
overflow area.  
It is usually bad practice to let VARLEN default to zero.

VARLEN fields on the AS/400 are implemented as a fixed length in the record 
(which may be zero) 
and an overflow area to contain the excess.  The advantage is reduced total 
size of the file at 
the expense of some performance.  I am surprised that your file actually grew 
although the 
recompile of the PF may have caused different disk allocations to occur.

There is a certain amount of overhead involved with VARLEN fields:

1/ The 2-byte binary length of data.  This is part of the record format and 
exists for each 
VARLEN field.

2/ The information linking the field to the data in the shadow area.  This 
takes 25 bytes of 
data in the overflow area and exists for each overflowed field.

3/ The overflow area is managed sequentially and if an update to the VARLEN 
field increases its 
current overflow allocation an additional allocation is made with additional 
linkage 
information.

It is really good practice to reorganise VARLEN files because the overflow area 
is rearranged 
to minimize the number of linkage sections.

I would suggest that you have a lot of data in the overflow area probably due 
to a poorly 
chosen allocation value thus may records now have at least 27 bytes more data 
than they did 
previously.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.

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//--- forwarded letter -------------------------------------------------------
> X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2448.0)
> Date: Fri, 14 May 99 12:59:13 -0500
> From: "Stone, Brad V (TC)" <bvstone@taylorcorp.com>
> To: "'MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com'" <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
> Reply-To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Subject: VARLEN field... what good are they?

> 
> I was playing around with the VARLEN keyfield today.  I have a field in a
> file that can be a max of 31000 bytes.  I thought "hey, the VARLEN field
> will save some space."
> 
> This field contains text, and the length is varying.  No telling what will
> go in there.
> 
> Anyhow, I changed the DDS.  The file size actually grew about 3k after the
> change.  
> 
> So, my question is, what good does the VARLEN keyword do in a case where I
> have a field that could be anywhere from 1byte to 31k?  Is this just not the
> best place for it?
> 
> Bradley V. Stone
> Taylor Corporation - OASIS Programmer/Analyst 
> bvstone@taylorcorp.com
> 
> 
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