Re: IBM iSeries Access for Windows ODBC driver ALIAS

Hmmm.

Worth looking into.

Thanks.

Pete Helgren

Peter Dow (ML) wrote:

Hi Pete,

Well, that puts the column headings or text on a field.

When creating a table with SQL you can do something like this:

CREATE TABLE UMLIB/TEST (
        FieldNameLongerThan10Char FOR COLUMN SHORTNAME CHAR (5) NOT NULL WITH
DEFAULT
        )

where SHORTNAME is aka the system name, i.e. one that can be used by the
system, e.g. DFU or RPG.  The FieldNameLongerThan10Char can be used by SQL,
but not RPG.  Nor is it the ALIAS of DDS fame, which afaik was added for
COBOL, which allows up to 30-character names.


While fooling around with this, I also learned that "^~`" is a valid object
name.

        CRTPF FILE(QGPL/"^~`") RCDLEN(5)
        CRTPF FILE(QGPL/xyz) RCDLEN(5)

here's what you see in PDM

Opt  Object      Type        Attribute   Text
    "^~`"       *FILE       PF-DTA
    XYZ         *FILE       PF-DTA

So I read the fine manual (CL Reference V4R4) and learned that pretty much
anything goes between quotes --

"The middle characters of a quoted name can contain any character except ,
*, ?, ', ", hex 00 through 3F, or hex FF, and is delimited by a slash."

I don't know if this was allowed back on a System3/Model10 back when I
learned naming rules, and if it wasn't I'm not sure when it started being
allowed.

Peter Dow
Dow Software Services, Inc.
www.dowsoftware.com
909 793-9050 voice
909 793-4480 fax

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Pete Helgren
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 2:24 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: IBM iSeries Access for Windows ODBC driver ALIAS


Peter I think you would want to use  Label On :

*LABEL ON* SAMPLECOLL/INVENTORY_LIST
(ITEM_NUMBER      *IS* 'ITEM                NUMBER',
ITEM_NAME         *IS* 'ITEM                NAME',
UNIT_COST         *IS* 'UNIT                COST',
QUANTITY_ON_HAND  *IS* 'QUANTITY            ON                  HAND',
LAST_ORDER_DATE   *IS* 'LAST                ORDER               DATE',
ORDER_QUANTITY    *IS* 'NUMBER              ORDERED')


Example was from iSeries InfoCenter...

HTH,

Pete Helgren

Peter Dow (ML) wrote:

Hi Everyone,

Just ran across an interesting anomaly.  I used MS Access 2000 to open a
.mdb file and export one of its tables to a V5R3 iSeries using

IBM's iSeries

Access for Windows ODBC driver (V5R2M0 SI10914).  It created the

file on the

iSeries, and populated it with data with no errors or problems.

However, looking at the field definitions with DSPFFD, I noticed the
following:

Column headings are the MS Access field names in quotes, e.g.

"Description"

instead of just Description.

The PF field names were generated from the MS Access field names

as the 1st

five characters plus a 5-digit number, e.g. Division became

DIVIS00001, even

though Division is within the 10-character limit.

The MS Access field names enclosed in quotes and upper/lower case became
alternative names (DDS keyword ALIAS).

What's interesting about this is that ALIAS("Division") is not allowed by
the SEU syntax checker, nor is it valid according to the V5R3

DDS manual.  I

have a utility that retrieves the physical file source, and using it then
trying to compile the resulting source failed because of the ALIAS.  I
modified the utility to strip the quotes and convert the field

name to all

uppercase.  But it does seem odd that the ODBC driver gets away with
creating a physical file with an invalid ALIAS.

Does SQL have an equivalent to ALIAS that would allow this?
Peter Dow
Dow Software Services, Inc.
www.dowsoftware.com
909 793-9050 voice
909 793-4480 fax



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