Re: How do I recognize a system catalog table?

In article <34842680.D2AB37A1@garpac.com>, Jacob Salomon <jake@garpac.com> writes >|| : Quote from Jake's original message >| : Quote from Madison's response > >Madison (AKA SaTriGuy) wrote: >||The only possibility seems to be in the ti_flags column of systabinfo. >||without really rigorous checking, it seems that the ti_flags column >||for a system catalog has the 0x2 bit turned on; non-catalogs seem to >||have the 0x1 bit and temp tables in the bogus SORTTEMP database seem >||to have these bits turned off. >|| >||Q1: >||Can anyone confirm - with true knowledge - that I have come to a >||correct conclusion regarding these flags? >| >| Wrong - those are the page/row locking > >Thanks but that still leaves me wondering how to recognize a catalog, >since these last 2 bits are not the key I seek. I notice (with one >arched eyebrow ;-) you did not answer Q2, repeated below.. > Look at $INFORMIXDIR/etc/sysmaster.sql. Cannot you somehow get to sysmaster:sysdatabase and then check within systables for that database? Or check the partnum for the table against all tables in all databases in sysmaster.. I would add more but I'm in Win95 now and sysmaster.sql is on my Linux partition.. >||Q2: >||Carrying this to an unsurprising follow-up: Does anyone have genuine >||information (read: Documentation) on what in *&^%! these flags all >||stand for? It's not in the FM. (That's the fine manual - get your >||mind out of the gutter! ;-) > >As for Q3: >||Q3: >||Assuming my empirical conclusion to be correct regarding that low two >||bits of ti_flags, what kind of expression can I use to isolate this >||digit? >| >| Try select bitval(ti_flags, 1) from systabinfo > >Thanks! Exactly what I needed. But I don't see it documented in the >Guide to SQL Syntax. When I experimented with it I deliberately added a >third parameter, I incurred an error: > 694: Too many arguments passed to procedure (informix.bitval).>Interesting! So bitval() is *not* an SQL function; it is a stored >procedure in the sysmaster database. I think these procedures are in >need of documentation! > >Madison added: > >|The catalog tables for sysmaster still have the tabid < 99 business. >|The pseudo tables have a partition number < 1048576 (0x0100000). >|The views have a tabtype of "V" > >This would be helpful if I were accessing the catalogs directly. I am >not; I am getting all table information from the sysmaster database. > >I just realized I am making the assumption that sysmaster treats system >catalogs differently from regular tables. This is a reasonable >assumption but not necessarily correct. > >So who will set me straight on this issue? *Is* there a special way to >recognize a catalog from ti_flags in systabinfo? > >Thanks. -- David Williams