Re: QADBIFLD versus DSPFFD OUTPUT(*OUTFILE)

[John Yeung <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 5:59 PM, Vernon Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Is it possible that decimal place is given a different name? Like precision?

It's exceptionally unlikely.  Python makes it very easy to introspect
(such as getting a list of all an object's attributes) and I haven't
found anything.  I've asked on the iSeries Python forum, but I don't
expect to hear back.  (There are not many of us!)

> I don't know Python - if the RLA style checks format level IDs, then I
> do recommend NOT using any kind of RLA - I do know that one of the
> files' format changed at v7.1, and a product I was working on would have
> had to be recompiled - bad idea!!

Python is interpreted.  It gets all the file information it needs on
the fly.  The only way to break it would be for the file in question
to no longer have the field that you need.  Even then, you could take
steps to mitigate the damage, and you always have the option to fail
gracefully.  In other words, the RLA in iSeries Python is at least
equally dynamic and robust as using SQL.  The choice of which to use
is mainly up to (1) "shape" of the problem being tackled and (2)
programmer comfort level.

John