Re: Received FTP files have TYPE P

Hi Justin

You can ALTER TABLE on a regular physical file.

You cannot add a member to a table - SQL knows nothing about multiple members, so that is not allowed - a table inherits many of the attributes of a PF, adding the SQL type of TABLE. That's the object-based nature of things on IMB i, as you probably know.

There's some documentation on that somewhere - I can't find it right now - a table showing the implementation object for each kind of SQL object.

Cheers
Vern

On 4/20/2016 10:12 AM, Justin Dearing wrote:

On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 9:31 AM CRPence <crpbottle@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 19-Apr-2016 06:12 -0500, Rob Berendt wrote:
An SQL TABLE is recorded as having the attribute 'TB', in the field
DBXATR of file QADBXREF of the System Database Cross-Reference [defined
with TEXT('PF-physical,LF-logical,TB-table,VW-view,IX-index')], and all
other non-SQL Physical Files are designated as having the attribute
'PF'. Thus both a non-described PF and a DDS-described PF appear as
'P', and a SQL-DDL-described TABLE PF appear as 'T', in the SYSTABLES
VIEW; each one-character value designation, being derived from the
expression SUBSTR(DBXATR, 1, 1) that defines the TABLE_TYPE FOR TYPE
column of that SQL catalog VIEW.

I've noticed the P versus T thing looking at qsys2.systables, and its nice
to know the internal metadata that that gets derived from. That being said,
is there any practical difference? Can I not add as second member to TB or
execute an ALTER TABLE on a PF? It seems like that differentiation in the
meta data is mostly forensic.

Justin