Thanks for the reply Alan...

Thursday, December 11, 2003, 2:34:05 PM, Alan wrote:

AM> Is this to do via te client application? If so, then I suspect you are
AM> trying to make a temporary table? If so, then I think many people would
AM> advise that there are design alternatives which are better than trying to do
AM> this (e.g. metadata changes while connected do not become apparent to
AM> existing connections until they reconnect).

It's actually for the purpose of data importing. I basically have 12
data files to import and in those text files a blank record
(ie all spaces) represents a NULL entry.

The problem is that using the EXTERNAL FILE to declare a table doesn't
allow the option of interpreting blanks as NULLs, nor does setting a
field to NULL in an external file actually set it to NULL, and hence
I'd like to create a (yes, temporary) table to copy the data from the external
file table, perform the necessary processing and then place the data
into the new tables.

AM> If this is not the case then the easiest way is to use your admin tool e.g.
AM> IBExpert which provides on one tab of the table, the metadata. You copy it
AM> and run it in the SqlEditor with a different table name.

A copy and paste approach could be done, but there may be some
volatility in the table structures and was after a way to avoid a
copy-paste bug in the SQL scripts.

I'm presuming then that cloning a table or temporary tables are not
doable in Firebird?

AM> Alan




AM> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
AM> firebird-support-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com



AM> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/