RE: DDS modernization - use of REFFLD

Some folks that have used field reference file concept in DDS have continued
to do that in DDL using CREATE TABLE t1 AS (SELECT .... FROM refFile) WITH
NO DATA syntax.
If you do the same, this might ease your task a bit, as you could search
source members instead of DSPFFD output.

Elvis

Celebrating 11-Years of SQL Performance Excellence on IBM i5/OS and OS/400
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-----Original Message-----
Subject: DDS modernization - use of REFFLD

All,

Yesterday I received a change request that requires an existing PF field to
be increased in size. The actual program changes are trivial - the main
effort will be to identify which display files and printer files use that
field and verify that no other information will be overlaid by the new,
longer field.

Even if we didn't have a cross-reference utility, in our DDS-defined system
this would be fairly simple - dump the DSPFFD to an outfile and query for
the appropriate REFFLD.

Without a utility, I'm not sure how you'd do the equivalent task in a
DDL-defined system. Query the column-label or column-text and hope that the
designer specified everything consistently?

This is not intended as a criticism of DDL, I'm only trying to understand
how you DDL-guys tackle situations like this. If we end up redefining
everything in DDL, what other things should we watch out for?

Many thanks, JK