Re: ROWID

In article <reds.770614753@cheetah> reds@informix.com (Ron Delpiere-Smith) writes: Hi. Let me first thank you for posyting this clearing statement. [most part of the cited emai dropped] > In general, we recommend that users creating new applications > move toward primary keys as a method of row identification instead of > using rowids. Primary keys are defined in ANSI and using them will > make applications more portable since rowids are not supported by all > vendors. > New applications must not use ROWID. Ok, that could be done for most of them. But there are some problems left, probably not that common, but serious to my actual working. I am building a replication server based on SQL. This one is implemented as a process stuck in between the application process and the data base backend process. Tables are not necessarily replicated completely, but the user may specify a different condition for each of the replication targets. The strategy for this kind of replication is to INSERT the row into the original table, and then to SELECT it back, applying, one after another, the different replication condition for each of the targets. If the SELECT succeeds, the row is forwarded to the specified target. ROWID has been the one and only handle to support this mechanism. Not all of the tables being replicated have a unique key, not is it recommended to equip them with such a device. The tables themselves must not be altered, and the data model must be the same, regardless replication is running or not. Surely, the ROWIDs are used inside a single transaction only, thus preventing them (at least I hope so!) from being changed. Qs: Could the ROWID field, mentioned above, do the job? Could anyone imagine a better solution for the problem of INSERT/reFETCH ? Best regards, Heinrich. Thank God, Monday's only once a week -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= /M/A/I Deutschland GmbH, Softwarezentrum Koeln Heinrich Seebauer Mathias-Brueggen-Str. 85 Software Engineering 50829 Koeln, Federal Republic of Germany Phone: x221/956400-0 Phax: x221/956400-69 emale: heinrich@mai.de =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=