Re: how to increase field size without increasing the field size

[Booth Martin <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

15 characters is an awfully big field.  Really big.    Just a thought 
here... If you were to reserve the first few columns to specify some 
large common split, that would still leave you with a humongous number.  
For instance, if you said the first 2 characters is reserved for the  
country code then you still have 13 character field, which holds 
9,999,999,999,999 (10 trillion - 1) PO numbers. If you allow characters 
the number jumps by at least 26 times 26 times.

The issue doesn't seem to me to be the limitation of 15, but how best to 
use them.  Those first few columns could be country codes, Julian date 
of order, source of order (phone, mail, web, sales staff), first 3 
letters of customer name, initials of order taker, or any other useful 
scheme you like.

If the issue is the customer might have a greater than 15 Character PO 
number, that is different and suggests different cures.

On 4/26/2014 7:44 AM, Steve Richter wrote:
> We have an order header file that contains a PONUM field.  Char(15).
> But as the business expands to take on new customers sending in orders
> with a PO number the 15 char limit might not be enough. The EDI 850
> specs I look at say po number can be 1 - 22 characters.
>
> The programmer who handles the RPG code with traditional F spec files
> does not want to increase the field size and recompile all of the
> programs.
>
> I am thinking of a scheme where I put a special key in the char(15)
> ponum field when the po number is longer than 15 characters. That
> value being the key to another file that contains the actual value.
>
> Are there any system level, DB2 features that can be used to solve this problem?
>
> Ideal would be something where code written using RPG SQL would
> function without any code changes.
>
> d vPonum      s       30a
>
>     exec sql
>     select    a.ponum, a.shipname
>     into       :vPonum, :vShipName
>     from     dwhpf30c a
>     where   a.ordnum = :inOrdnum ;
>
> In the above code snippet, dwhpf30c is the order header. DWHPF30C is a
> CRTPF created file and PONUM is a CHAR(15) field.  When the value of
> the PONUM field is actually more than 15 characters I need some logic
> somewhere that will return the full value from where it is stored into
> the char(30) program variable vPonum.
>
> thanks,