Communicator e3000 MPE/iX Release 6.5 (Non-Platform Software Release C.65.00 (30216-90291)

164 Chapter6
Announcing a Post 6.5 Release Patch
IMAGE/SQL Date Mapping Enhancement
IMAGE/SQL Date Mapping Enhancement
CAUTION The DATE MAPPING enhancement for IMAGE/SQL will be available in the
first IMAGE/SQL patch released on MPE/iX version 6.5. This enhancement
requires migration of the ATCINFO file since the ATCINFO file format has been
changed to keep track of additional date related information.
The IMAGE/SQL version number for 6.5 release is B.G3.01. Since this version does not
include the DATE MAPPING enhancement, no migration is needed. However, once you
apply the IMAGE/SQL patch with the version number of B.G4.01, or any version following
the B.G4.01 version, you need to migrate all your ATCINFO files in order to use
IMAGE/SQL.
Currently, users are experiencing some problems accessing various dates in TurboIMAGE
databases through IMAGE/SQL. Some typical problems are:
• In TurboIMAGE, dates may be held in numeric or ascii fields. If no data exists in a data
field, it will hold binary zeroes, and will be interpreted by SQL as zero rather than null.
Any attempt to CAST this data into a DATE format will fail with an error, and the
SELECT can not continue. Similarly, a failure in the validation of dates in the 3GL code
will result in the same error, and the SELECT statement fails.
• Both FA3000 and MM3000 will be handling year 2000 and beyond by incrementing the
year to 'A0' for the year 2000, 'B0' for year 2010 etc. This allows their applications to be
able to distinguish the year 2000 and beyond with a 'YYMMDD' format. The users of
FA3000 and MM3000 need a way for IMAGE/SQL to convert the above format year to
SQL DATE and vise versa. To alleviate the problems mentioned above, IMAGE/SQL has
been enhanced to allow some numeric or ascii fields to be mapped to DATE columns, and
the users can specify what DATE format the data is in. The date formats supported are
the same as the formats supported by MPE. Following is a description of the enhanced
SPLIT and UPDATE TYPE commands in the IMAGESQL program.
IMAGE/SQL SPLIT command and UPDATE TYPE command have been enhanced to allow
SIGNED or UNSIGNED mapped type if the mapped type is DECIMAL. If UNSIGNED keyword is
specified, then all positive values will be unsigned. The default is SIGNED. If the mapped
type is DATE, and the source type is P8, Z6 or Z8, SIGNED or UNSIGNED keyword can be
used to indicate whether all positive values will be SIGNED or UNSIGNED. The default is
SIGNED.
IMAGE/SQL UPDATE TYPE and SPLIT commands are also enhanced to allow users to
specify FORMAT=BB1 or BB2. (BB1 is for Business Basic short decimal, and BB2 for
Business Basic decimal). The NewMappedType must be FLOAT. An error will be returned if a
value is not in the right range.
This enhancement also has a dependency on the Business basic patch BBRDXU7 for the new
Business Basic conversion routines.