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Status Future consideration
Workspace IBM i
Categories Db2 for i
Created by Guest
Created on Dec 2, 2020

Add support for *LAST in CREATE ALIAS

CREATE ALIAS command allows to create aliases for a specific MEMBER of a physical table on IBM i, but the alias has to be explicitly named. Many applications add members periodically and start filling rows in the last member.

Having the ability of CREATE ALIAS... TABLE(*LAST) will avoid the complexity of adding create alias to programs or CLs that creates new aliases on physical files.


Use Case:

the user needs to periodically query the content of the last member with SQL on multimember tables.


Idea priority Medium
  • Guest
    Reply
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    Feb 26, 2021

    IBM will use this request as input to planning but no commitment is made or implied. This request will be updated in the future if IBM implements it.

  • Guest
    Reply
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    Feb 4, 2021

    *LAST would be very nice indeed but what about *ALL ?
    That would be like a SQL union that can read thru all members.

  • Guest
    Reply
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    Dec 16, 2020

    Thank you for your input. We will use that as we continue to evaluate this request. IBM will provide a response after evaluation is complete.

  • Guest
    Reply
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    Dec 9, 2020

    Thank you very much:

    From a functional perspective, my preferred option is that the *LAST be evaluated at query time, so each time the alias is used, it will be answering with rows on the actual last member at query time.

    If that is not possible (or impractical, or have a high impact on performance), I think is good enough to implement a version where *LAST be evaluated at CREATE ALIAS execution time, and, if users need to refresh the definition, they can execute a CREATE OR REPLACE ALIAS... which in any case is easier than creating Stored Procedures that check the last member of a file to create a new alias or creating stored procedures with an OVRDBF.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Dec 7, 2020

    If the CREATE ALIAS statement were to support a value of *LAST, is the expectation that the alias is created with the current *LAST member, or should the value of *LAST get determined each time the alias is used in another SQL statement?

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Dec 6, 2020

    IBM has received the requirement and is evaluating it. IBM will provide a response after evaluation is complete.