Some questions about views

Background: Michelle made this change to the webtodev database yesterday: Alter table to_recipient add ( fr_fee_reduction MONEY(16,2) default 0 not null before source_flag, fr_explanation VARCHAR(255) before source_flag,fr_operator_id VARCHAR(30) before source_flag); After she did this, the v_to_recipient view started returning syntax errors when queries were run against it. She then changed the view to add these 3 new fields. The syntax errors continued. When I checked the sysviews table to see what Informix had stored, I discovered that some of the lines containing the FROM clause did not appear to have spaces in them any longer: EX : line n: “…outer (transcript_purpose” ß no space at the end Line n+1: “x4…” ß no space at the beginning either So the resulting query would read like “FROM … transcript_purposex4 …” - which I think was the cause of the syntax errors When I dropped and re-created the view, the lines in the sysviews changed – and were cut off in different places. And the syntax errors went away. Questions: Does Informix regenerate the sysviews rows for a view when a table of the view is altered? Does Informix account for spaces when putting the sysviews rows back together for a view? Is a view cached and not re-read from sysviews until a certain event happens? What could have caused the view to be corrupted? FYI I found the following vague statement at http://database.sarang.net/database/informix/book/informix-sql/01alter.fm.html#1 25738 “Altering a table on which a view depends might invalidate the view.” Thanks, floyd