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Status Not under consideration
Workspace IBM i
Categories Db2 for i
Created by Guest
Created on Oct 27, 2023

RELATED IDEAS

Allow RUNSQLSTM to support a "continuation character" for very long SQL statements

When coding SQL statements for creating tables or indexes or whatever, we often have a problem formatting very long SQL statements because there is not "continuation line" character supported by the statement processor.  The COMMENT ON statement can accept 2000 characters of text, but coding that 2000 characters is time-consuming and difficult to maintain because you have to run the text right up to the (current) right margin, then continue on the next line -- there is no way to indicate to RUNSQLSTM to end a line early and continue with the next line.  This causes headaches and wasted time when the member is placed into a source file with a wider margin because the statement processor does not nicely "flow" the text together because we CAN'T TELL IT TO DO SO. Since it is impossible as well to indicate, for a given member, what margins to use to run the statements (each member *could* have been created with a different margin setting over the years), this leaves great blank blocks of text in the COMMENT ON statement text, and in many cases, causes the text to exceed the 2000 allowable characters due to the additional blanks.

Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jan 9, 2024
    IBM does not intend to provide a solution to this Idea at this time, so it is being closed. The database team has many higher priority Ideas to implement, so this is unlikely to be considered anytime soon.

    IBM believes the best solution for this situation is to move the source into the IFS. We do not intend to pursue a change to the RUNSQLSTM command at this time.

    Db2 for i development team
    IBM Power Systems Development
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jan 3, 2024

    Using the IFS to store source is not an option for us at this time (we're looking into it); however, I've tried it on a few sources and it works if you remember to end each line with a blank.

    We've struggled with this long text for years. We can continue to do so, or write our own pre-processor for the source member (or stop putting comments on tables -- it IS kinda silly isn't it?).


  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Nov 13, 2023
    IBM needs more information to further assess your Idea.

    Using the IFS to store RUNSQLSTM source does not have the problem with blanks that you describe. Switching to use the IFS would allow the removal of excess trailing blanks, which is the root of your problem. Would this be a possible alternate work around?

    To implement this Idea, we would need to introduce a new parameter on the RUNSQLSTM command to let the user provide a continuation character for strings. The user would need to be aware of what characters exist in their source in order to set this character appropriately. We question whether implementing something like this would have significant adoption by the user community.

    We are interested in comments from the submitter or any interested party.

    Db2 for i development
    IBM Power Systems Development

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