Re: rowid

Joseph, I am not sure that this is relevant. But there has been another change in this area. In the olden days a row was guaranteed to keep it's rowid for it's life time (until it was deleted). This is not true anymore. All versions that support the inplace alter table feature may internally delete and reinsert rows for tables that have been altered in the past using "alter table". This happens during updates of rows that happen to be on the same disk page. And it results in a change of rowid because the rowid is built from <logical page> + <slot number>. This deleting and reinserting is done when shorter rows were altered into longer ones. When the page is finally converted to the new format (it's always done for the whole page) there may not be enough space on it for all the rows. For programs that remember rowids this can be quite a surprise. Michael rkusenet wrote: > "Smitty" <wolphie@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:4f39af7f.0305190604.414c07a@posting.google.com... > >>We have 1800+ 4GL programs written using Informix SE 4.0 and have >>needed to upgrade for a LONG time. We have a 5-user version of >>Informix IDS 7.31.UD5-1 to test with. Someone told us that the newer >>versions of Informix don't support "rowid", which is included in a lot >>of our code thanks to the FourGen CASE tools. We are having trouble >>getting a definitive answer to this question, does anyone know when or >>if Informix products stopped using rowid? >>Thanks! > > > rowid will not work if your table is fragmented, unless you create the > table WITH ROWID clause. Now given that you are currently using SE 4.0, > if you move your schema as it is, then there is no question of fragmentation. > Hence your old programs can safely use rowids, as long as you don't change > the schema and start fragmenting. > > Ravi > > > -- === Michael Mueller ================== Tel. + 49 8171 63600 Fax. + 49 8171 63615 Web: http://www.mm.kay-mueller.de http://www.planets.kay-mueller.de ======================================