Copybook Structure change - recalculation of segment length

Keanehelp · New User Joined: 27 May 2008 Posts: 3 Location: USA, CA.

Hi,
We are modifying the structure of an existing IMS segment(increasing overall size by 1 byte and expanding a variable in the middle of the segment resulting in all following variables being displaced by 1 byte)

While writing the program to restructure the data, do we need to recalculate and update the length of each record using this segment ?

Also please could you let me know the various scenarios when the segment length for each record in an IMS database needs to be recalculated ?

Thanks

Sandy Zimmer · Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 10:34 am Post subject:

If you are adding a byte to the middle of your segment in an EXISTING database, you are going to have a real mess unless you are very careful. If your database is defined as variable length, you always need to insert it with a recalculated length. Since you are going thru all the trouble of writing a conversion program, why not put all variables at the end of your segment?