Re: Umm, almost embarrassed to ask this, but....

Paul Roberts wrote: > > In article <34DB8723.410D@netcomuk.co.uk>, > Neil Truby <ntruby@netcomuk.co.uk> wrote: > >What's the best way to retrieve the value of a system variable, say > >TODAY? Obviously, I can do: > > > >SELECT TODAY from table1 > >where key='aaa'> > > >but I have to know that this will return a single row. How about a > >general select statement that doesn't require detailed knowledge of a > >table's data? > > The standard way to do this seems to be:- > > select today > from systables > where tabid = 1> > If I were given to making universal assertions I would probably claim > that all Informix databases have a table called "systables" and it > always has exactly one row whose tabid is 1; so instead I will merely > say that this has been the case with all Informix databases that it > has been my pleasure to meet. Then I guess you've not met MODE ANSI databases... :-( I agree with the general technique (it's what I use), but if the code has to work in both MODE ANSI and non-ANSI databases, then you need to quote the table owner: SELECT TODAY FROM 'informix'.SysTables WHERE TabID = 1; To be horrendously nit-picking, table owners became part of the Informix product set somewhere around the 4.00 release, so this would fail on the older versions of the product. I trust that no-one reading this has to actually be concerned with pre-4 databases (in fact, I'd like to think that most people don't have to fuss with pre-5 databases, but that's a bit optimistic, to judge from the questions I see). Yours pedantically, Jonathan Leffler (jleffler@earthlink.net or jleffler@visa.com)