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Icetips Article



Par2: Temp Tables
2000-03-01 -- Scott Ferret
 
An industrial myth has evolved over the last few years in the 
Clarion/SQL community regarding the need of a temporary table on the 
server so that you can issue SELECT statements from anywhere and have 
something to put in it.  This article will try and put that myth to 
rest (I know it is a futile exercise, but lets try).

I believe that the reason people believe that they have to have this 
temp table on the server is they look at a Clarion FILE definition and 
believe that there must be an equivalent TABLE to match it on the 
server.  You do not need this.

What the Clarion system requires is that the fields in the FILE 
definition match some fields in some table on the server.  This is so 
it can get field type information from the server.  The most important 
thing to realise is that the fields on the server do not have to be 
different fields.   Here is a Clarion FILE definition that works with 
SQLAnywhere with a user who has sufficient priority to see the system 
tables.  The idea can be adapted to work with any tables that you now 
that your program will be able to see.

MyTempTable FILE,DRIVER('SQLAnywhere'),NAME('SysColumns')
Record  RECORD
ALongField    LONG,NAME('Length')
AShortField   USHORT, NAME('SysLength')
AStringField  STRING(100),NAME('cname')
LongField2    LONG,NAME('Length')
StrFld2       STRING(20),NAME('cname')
CStrFld       CSTRING(50),NAME('cname')
             END
         END

The important things to notice are:

1) The file's label has nothing to do with the name of the table on 
   the server
2) The field's label has nothing to do with the name of the column 
   on the server
3) You can use the NAME attribute on a field to have multiple 
   fields point at the same column
4) You should try and use the same data types as the ones on 
   the backend.  But it is not necessary.



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