Re: include current date in logical file

On 23 May 2013 12:23, aec wrote:

A word of caution, I recently discovered if you have a
DDS-defined or SQL-defined DATE or TIMESTAMP or TIME field in a file,
and insert a record using a field list but do not include that field
name in the list for the values, the write will automatically use the
current timestamp.

When using the SQL statement "INSERT (column-list) VALUES(list-of-values)", the SQL will insert whatever is the DEFAULT for the columns not in the column-list. No caution required; i.e. it does what it does, according to the definition of the column.

For a DDS field\column for which no DFT() was specified, the date\time\timestamp data types are generated by the DDS compiler to have the effective CURRENT register for the respective type. I believe this was the chosen effect, instead of providing one or more special value(s) for the DFT() specification; i.e. they avoided adding something like DFT(*CURRENT) or each of DFT(*CURDATE), DFT(*CURTIME), and DFT(*CURTIMESTAMP). Since before the introduction of these types, the syntax diagram of the DFT (Default) keyword has remained:

DFT('value' | numeric-value | X'hexadecimal-value' | *NULL)

Query the SYSCOLUMNS catalog VIEW to see the default value to verify that the effect is as revealed by the catalog. For the DDS data types L\T\Z, the default value established for field without ALWNULL specification, will be respectively: CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_TIME, and CURRENT_TIMESTAMP. When ALWNULL is specified for a DDS column with one of these types, IIRC the default DFT() is overridden to effectively be DFT(*NULL) if left unspecified for the column.