Re: Long table column names - are they on the horizon?

[Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

IIRC, the basic problem with this is that they'd have to change size of 
the "fieldname" field in the input and output specs.  Right now they 
provide 14 chars (the extra 4 are presumably for the (nn) suffix used in 
arrays).  They'd have to change the layout of I and O specs to 
accomodate longer names, and I'm sure they're not eager to do that :)

At one time, I think George Farr said that they were considering adding 
the longer names into externally described data structures (E DS with 
EXTNAME) as a future enhancement, that way you could use the long names, 
if you used the feature that lets you read directly into a data 
structure.   But I haven't heard anything recently about this -- and my 
memory on what I heard in the past is a little fuzzy.

Of course, you could solve this problem YOURSELF, TODAY.   You could 
simply read the file using an SQL statement.  SQL supports long field 
names. Or, you could write a preprocessor that retrieves the ALIAS names 
and uses them to build the code for a data structure.  (Or perhaps, use 
both...)


Aaron Bartell wrote:
> Been doing a healthy dose of professional services the past couple weeks,
> and today I think I would give my left nut just to have more than 10 chars
> for column names.  It doesn't help that I am trying to take 30 char long XML
> element names and try to fit them coherently into 10 chars.  I feel like I
> am doing a workout! :-)