Re: Hmm. "String nativeSQL(String sql) . . . converts the . . .JDBCSQL grammar into . . . the native form of the statement"

In response to my statement that:
>> I think we're speaking at cross-purposes here

Joe Sam Shirah wrote:

I think you're exactly right. My original "RRN is not an SQL concept"
comment was simply to note that standard SQL, and relational databases in
general, don't grok relative record numbers or even the notion of reliable
sequence without a WHERE clause.

Last night, before I had to leave for my dental appointment, I looked through the Javadoc for java.sql.DatabaseMetaData. Interesting: it even gives you the product name for the database system.

Actually, I don't have any *immediate* need for accessing DB2/400 through JDBC; this exercise of learning JDBC is mainly geared towards using Scott Klement's JDBCR4 JDBC from RPG API to access "off-system" databases.

One thing that my cursory examination of DatabaseMetaData didn't tell me was whether there was a way (other than inferring it from the product name, or using trial-and-error) to determine whether a database recognizes either the MySQL "LIMIT" clause, or the similar (I forget whose) "TOP" clause, for restricting the effect of a statement to only the first of several indistinguishable records. (I only know of it because that's how Sequel Pro does it with MySQL.)

As I recall, Squirrel, while it doesn't take any steps to avoid having an update of a duplicated record affect all copies of that record, it *does* warn you when you're about to change a bunch of duplicate records.

If a database management system truly has no access to RRNs, and therefore cannot distinguish between to identical records, then there should be no reason to care which one is affected by a change: "a difference that makes no difference is no difference." If it does have access to RRNs as a means of distinguishing two otherwise-identical records, it should do so. The real issue is that don't want to end up giving users with an ill-constructed database the ability to *create* a redundancy that can only be removed by removing *all* the redundant records and manually re-inserting them as non-redundant.

--
JHHL