Re: How do I recognize a system catalog table?

>Hi Family. > >If I run a query against systables in any database, I can exclude system >catalogs from my result simply by adding the clause: WHERE TABID < 99. >However, I am putting together a utility that will run against the >sysmaster database - tables systabinfo, systabnames. From this >perspective, there seems to be no distinction between database tables >and the system catalog tables in those databases. > >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 > >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! ;-) > >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 > >I don't know of any bitwise AND operator that works in SQL. I'd like to >specify ordinary tables with "and ti_flags = 1" but I just noticed a >table whose ti_flags is 0X00000901, so this shortcut fails. Also, the >trick of multiplying the ti_flags by 0x10000000 (268435456) to shift the >low digit up, followed by dividing it back down will aslo fail, because >it will quickly incur an arithemtic error: > 1215: Value exceeds limit of INTEGER precision> >I have already found out that I cannot use bracketed substrings on >hex(ti_flags). e.g. hex(ti_flags)[10,10]. I have also noticed that >although ti_flags is a 16-bit column, the hex() function displays it as >a 32-bit value. > >So how do I isolate bits in the ti_flags column? > >Thanks. >-- > -- Jake (Never yelled "CROWDED THEATER!" during a fire) Jake, 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" Madison Pruet