The ROW data types

IBM® Informix® supports the named and unnamed ROW data types. A ROW type is a complex type that combines several table columns. You create a ROW type with the CREATE ROW TYPE instruction, and then you can reuse the type definition for a table column.

Genero BDL does not support the IBM Informix ROW data types:

• It is not possible to define BDL variables with a named ROW type. The equivalent would be a RECORD variable, but data is not mapped directly from a structured ROW column, you must list individual fields of the ROW column.
• The static SQL syntax does not support ROW-related syntax elements:
  • The DDL statements CREATE ROW TYPE, DROP ROW TYPE, CREATE CAST and DROP CAST are not allowed,
  • In CREATE TABLE / ALTER TABLE DDL statements, the data type must be a built-in type.
  • The :: cast operator is not supported when specifying a ROW() literal. However, the CAST() expressions are allowed.
• The fgldbsch schema extractor will report an invalid data type if you try to get the schema for a table with a column defined with a ROW type.

However:

• Static SQL allows multilevel single-dot notation, so you can, for example, identify a ROW field as employee.address.city.
• Dynamic SQL can be used to insert or update rows with ROW type columns.
• Individual ROW column fields can be fetched to BDL program variables, as long as the basic types match.