At 06:59 AM 9/20/2001 +0000, hannes hernler wrote:

>what is the format version number ?

When you add or drop columns from a table - or make existing
columns longer - InterBase creates a new description of the
table, which is stored in RDB$FORMATS. Every record has its
format version stored with it, so InterBase can handle a table
that has a variety of formats. It converts them to the most
recent format on retrieval and stores them in the most recent
format when they are modified.

When the InterBase ODS was defined, disk space was very expensive
so we only allocated a byte for the format indicator in each record.
In addition, some operations (activating triggers for one) that
don't change the stored format of the record do increment the format
version. Now it's an issue, but not one we're comfortable fixing
in V1.0 of Firebird.

>what happens if it increases above limit of 256?

Nothing. You can't change the table again until you backup
and restore the database.


Regards,

Ann
www.ibphoenix.com
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