RE: Can I build a Logical file over a physical file in QS36F?

Booth,

I tried this once, building a logical over a "flat" file, and I didn't get
the type of file I wanted.  I wound up using SUBST for all the fields, and
then they were output only, not input.  Couldn't use it.

What I wound up doing was creating the file with DDS and compiling it to
another library.  Then I did a simple CPYF FMTOPT(*NOCHK) from the "real"
file onto the file I created with DDS.  To test this I copied an OCL for a
program that used the file and OVRDBF to my test file.  Then I ran the OCL
and everything worked perfectly.

If a program defines a file as 'F'ile described, it ignores the data
structure entirely, so you can do whatever you want with it.  I think the
Key field might change the arrival sequence though, not sure.  But then I
could modify programs or create new programs making it an externally
described file at my leisure.

After the testing was done I deleted the file in QS36F and copied over my
DDS source and physical into QS36F.

Just be aware that if you use unique keys in your new DDSed file you may
loose duplicate record keys when copying over from the flat file.  In one
case that's what I wanted to do and I changed the parameter for Max Errors
(forget parm name) to *NOMAX.  In another case I didn't want to do this and
wound up making it a non-unique key.

HTH,

Regards,

Jim Langston
Programmer/Analyst
Cels Enterprises, Inc.

From:   booth@martinvt.com [SMTP:booth@martinvt.com]
Sent:   Saturday, August 11, 2001 1:53 PM
To:     midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject:        Can I build a Logical file over a physical file in QS36F?

Can I build a Logical file over a physical file in QS36F?   The physical
file is a program-described file and I am wondering about creating a
logical over it with the actual field descriptions and then use the
logical as an Externally described file?


------------------------------------------------
Booth Martin
Booth@MartinVT.com
http://www.MartinVT.com
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