Re: SQL Insert Row as last RRN

This is a pretty big potential gotcha. With SQL, if you don't do "ORDER BY" you definitely do not guarantee the result of the fetch. So in this case, even with INSERTs in sequence, unless you add ORDER BY RRN(myWorkfile), you can't be certain what order you'll see the data.

What happens to this file downstream? Is it read by another program? Does it use RLA or SQL? Why can't you add a sequence field?

Another option rather than delete the record is set the column to null (or some unused value) and then skip those records downstream.

Joe

Should also mention...

The order in which rows are inserted does not guarantee the order in which they will be retrieved.

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Koester, Michael
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2011 10:31 AM
To: RPG400-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: SQL Insert Row as last RRN

I have a very simple 1-column workfile created on the fly with embedded SQL. As I add rows to the table, some situations require that some rows need to be deleted, which works just fine. But the next row added then gets stuffed into the workfile in the position (relative-record-number-wise) of the first row vacated by the delete. I didn't anticipate this when I designed my process, so I didn't build in a sequence number column. All the access to this workfile is through SQL - no RLA in this program.

Is there a way to specify on the INSERT statement that the new row is to have an RRN greater than that of the greatest RRN already written? If not, is there a simple way to re-sequence (compress) out the deleted rows after my DELETE statement, so that the result has contiguous RRNs (thereby leaving no gaps, and a subsequent INSERT would have to go to the "end" of the workfile)?

Thanks.

Michael Koester