Re: DDS Support

["M. Lazarus" <mlazarus@xxxxxxxx>]

James,

At 6/27/00 11:31 PM -0700, you wrote:
> >   Out of curiosity, would you
> have the same opinion if we were talking
> > about replacing CL with REXX?
>
> That would be a bit more of a challenge. <g>  But since REXX
> is
> available on just about every platform and OS, it wouldn't break my
> heart to see CL wither on the vine.  Don't get me wrong, I like CL,
> I'm
> just not married to it.

 My point is that just because it exists on "all"
platforms doesn't mean that we should be forced to switch to it. 
Where is the ROI?

> But back to the main topic, I would propose
> energy should be spent
> having SQL enhanced to allow for a REFFLD type of definition and 
> any
> other feature that PF/LF DDS possesses that is not within SQL.  In
> the
> mean time, I'll write my own data dictionary and format definition
> processor which does have REFFLD capability and use it to generate the
> SQL.

 Now here's the rub.  Putting those features in SQL would make
SQL non-compatible w/ the rest of the world.  So all the cross
platform compatibility arguments fall my the wayside.  So now we're
back where we started from - IBM may as well enhance DDS and get it over
with.

> > >BTW, if you -do- have to change the
> underlying DB (and at some time you
> > >undoubtedly will), with the appropriate tool you can create new
> DDS and
> > >new SQL and a conversion program when CHGPF or CPYF *MAP *DROP
> won't do
> > >the job for you.
> > 
> >   When is this the case?


>  When you take some file that had the
> date in separate mo/dy/yr fields
> and want to create a single field that is a date data type comes to
> mind.

 Then you're changing the layout or format of the data, so that's
not a fair comparison.  But you actually can do it by mapping the
fields in a *LF and then doing the CPYF *MAP *DROP

 -mark