RE: Best Practices on DB2 SQL Databases

Yes, as near as I can tell. FOR COLUMN and FOR SYSTEM NAME are only
allowed in DB2/400 (DB2/i?). Values are not required in SQL for DB2/400
but if omitted a value will be generated.

For those nay-sayers out there, this DOES NOT mean DB2/400 is a
non-conforming database. It just has some extra features to make it
backwards compatible with long-standing practices on the AS/400 and
System/38.

I implied earlier that you could use ALTER TABLE to change the generated
short names for a table. You cannot. That it has been so long since I
had to rename the short names that I had forgotten reinforces my
contention that you don't often need to do it. What we've done is
generate the DB2/400 database from the external tools, then go into ops
nav and generate CREATE SQL for the entire schema (one quick
right-click) and then work through the SQL changing the FOR COLUMN and
FOR SYSTEM NAME generated names to meaningful short names. We deleted
the schema as created by the tools and ran the changed SQL script to
recreate it. The tools still worked. The generated code still worked.
And we could use RPG with externally defined files that had meaningful
field names.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of rob@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 11:59 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Best Practices on DB2 SQL Databases

Is the "FOR COLUMN" below an IBM extension to the standard?
CREATE TABLE QTEMP/DELETEME (BIGLONGNAME FOR COLUMN SHORTNAME CHAR (10 )
NOT NULL WITH DEFAULT)


Rob Berendt