IBM Power Ideas Portal
This portal is to open public enhancement requests against IBM Power Systems products, including IBM i. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).
Shape the future of IBM!
We invite you to shape the future of IBM, including product roadmaps, by submitting ideas that matter to you the most. Here's how it works:
Search existing ideas
Start by searching and reviewing ideas and requests to enhance a product or service. Take a look at ideas others have posted, and add a comment, vote, or subscribe to updates on them if they matter to you. If you can't find what you are looking for,
Post your ideas
Post an idea.
Get feedback from the IBM team and other customers to refine your idea.
Follow the idea through the IBM Ideas process.
Specific links you will want to bookmark for future use
Welcome to the IBM Ideas Portal (https://www.ibm.com/ideas) - Use this site to find out additional information and details about the IBM Ideas process and statuses.
IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com) - Use this site to view all of your ideas, create new ideas for any IBM product, or search for ideas across all of IBM.
ideasibm@us.ibm.com - Use this email to suggest enhancements to the Ideas process or request help from IBM for submitting your Ideas.
IBM does not intend to add native support for processing LOB variables at this time, so this request is being closed.
My understanding of this request and why I've voted for it is the problem with the maximum variable size of 16MB in RPG. Always, the size is above, I have to use an IFS file reference. For me, a third access method with pointer would be very useful - SQLTYPE(LOB_POINTER).
But in my eyes there is a conflict in the rfe description (lob as pointer) and the use case (access as IFS file). The use case for me, could be a new forth interesting access method, if SQL could give us directly a handler (open() or pipe()) for read() and close() APIs (similar to jdbc where you get a Reader object).
I have here a snippet from the discussion in 2013. Is this so called internal document stil valid or is it replaced with something new?
*********Added By Mark Anderson of IBM
*********05/02/2013 11:00:41
There is an internal read-only native interface that provides this capability.
It is not a formally documented API, but it is available. Contact Angela Newton
to register and get documentation for the interface if you really need it. It
is not a very easy interface to use.
It would be technically possible for RPG to provide an easier interface on top
of the support,, but it might be costly.Barbara would have a better idea than I
as to the cost.
It is already possible to set a pointer to the data portion of the LOB after defining the LOB as an SQLTYPE. Please add some specific details describing how the current LOB support is not sufficient.
I think this article describes what you are looking for:
http://www.mcpressonline.com/programming/rpg/practical-rpg-blobs-clobs-and-xml-part-2