Thanks for the isql pointer. Could you recommend a good open source
tool to manage firebird schema changes? One of the reasons I like being
able to get text out is version control; I can have my db schema checked
into CVS along with the set of cgi scripts that interact with it. Is
there some non-text dump way to get the same effect?

Also, I was asking because I couldn't figure out how to get a particular
alter to work. I have some tables with NUMERIC(10) fields. The perl
DBI interface used by the script we have (developed when it was talking
to Oracle) can't seem to handle those, I get complaints about 64bit
stuff. So I want to change them to NUMERIC(9), which worked ok on a
test table. However, if I do

alter table foo alter column bar type numeric(9);

in isql it complains that:
-Cannot change datatype for BAR. Conversion from base type BIGINT to
INTEGER is not supported.

All the values in the column are such that they will in fact fit in a 32
bit int. Any suggestions?

Thanks a bunch,
-emile

On Thu, 2004-04-15 at 14:00, Ann W. Harrison wrote:
> At 12:54 PM 4/15/2004, hamsder wrote:
>
> >With a small mysql db I'm used to being able to dump the schema and/or
> >the data to text files which are sql statements that, if re-run, will
> >recreate the database. ... I can
> >then do things like edit the schema file with a text editor, reload
> >the db using the edited schema file, and reload data by sourcing the
> >data file.
>
> Most modifications to the schema are done in place with ALTER statements
> from ISQL, DSQL programs, or tools. If you want to create a copy of the
> schema file, use
> isql -x <database name>
> as a command line tool. There are a number of database administration
> tools, open source, share-ware, trust-ware, and purely commercial that let
> you manage schema changes.
>
> One very rarely needs to unload and reload a Firebird database
> >
>
> Regards,
>
> Ann
> www.ibphoenix.com
> We have answers.
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>