At 12/02/2002 10:01 AM, you wrote:

>Daniel,
>
> >The proper way to change it is to create a temp field with the desired
> >properties...
>
>I am puzzled.
>
>There is a politically correct way to change a field attribute ?
>
>When doing it, can one dress causally or is a necktie de-rigour ? :)
>
>If fields attributes are stored in RDB$RELATION_FIELDS, I expect to get
>logic results when I change the table.
>
>Can you quote public documents that advice against touching system tables ?
>
>For what I know, Interbase WorkBench, Marathon and surely QuickDesk: all
>these tools routinely change fields in system tables in order to get quick
>results.

You are right. QuickDesk does do this as well. Also, there is another
system table that does save this value as well and it's in
RDB$FIELDS. Check to see if that one doesn't interfere with what you are
doing. Look in RDB$RELATION_FIELDS for the value in the RDB$FIELD_SOURCE
field and look it up in RDB$FIELDS. RDB$FIELDS contains all the
domains(user defined and system generated) for every field in your database.

It's just that when you also deal with MS-SQL, you can't go changing system
tables. You have to do it through DDL. It's probably a force of
habit. And, I have to admit that I did try what you are doing without much
success.


Daniel Rail
Senior System Engineer
ACCRA Group Inc. (www.accra.ca)
ACCRA Med Software Inc. (www.accramed.ca)