Re: Implicit cast on ORDER BY

[Justin Taylor <jtaylor.0ab@xxxxxxxxx>]

:H is the generic placeholder that IBMi uses for host variables.  You'll
see it in VE among other places.  Not all :H refer to the same host
variable.

Sorry for the confusion.




> date: Fri, 25 Oct 2024 10:31:35 -0700
> from: Peter Dow <petercdow@xxxxxxxxx>
> subject: Re: Implicit cast on ORDER BY
>
> Hi Justin,
>
> Like Rob, I'm curious why this is necessary:
>
> order by case when :H <> :H
>    then NumericCol     --decimal(7)  TableA
>    else CharCol end ;  --char(6)   TableA
>
> Since :H will never be unequal to :H, it's apparent you only want to use
> CharCol as the sort key.
>
>
> If it's a design requirement, I would think there should be a way to
> actually select the sort order, something like
>
> order by case when :H = 'numeric'
>    then NumericCol     --decimal(7)  TableA
>    else CharCol end ;  --char(6)   TableA
>
>
> If you just want to document the choices you could simply make one of
> them a comment
>
> order by
>    -- NumericCol  --decimal(7)  TableA
>       CharCol;    --char(6)     TableA
>
> --
> *Peter Dow* /
> Dow Software Services, Inc.
> 909 793-9050
> petercdow@xxxxxxxxx
> pdow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx /