Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!oliveb!pyramid!uccba!hal!ncoast!allbery
From: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Follow-up to: Problems with Unify
Message-ID: <7503@ncoast.UUCP>
Date: 13 Mar 88 23:19:22 GMT
References: <249@tsc3b21.UUCP> <50500005@upba> <350@vsi.UUCP>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery)
Followup-To: comp.databases
Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, Oh
Lines: 44

As quoted from <350@vsi.UUCP> by friedl@vsi.UUCP (Stephen J. Friedl):
+---------------
| In article <50500005@upba>, cory@upba.UUCP writes:
| > 	It is possible to get into unify.db by calling it file.db[r]
| > 	and using SQL on it.  We had to do this a couple of times when
| 
| To make this easier, copy SQL to another name, say USQL.  Then
| run some kind of binary editor on it to change file.db[r] to
| File.db[r] (note capital 'F').  Then link unify.db to File.db
| and File.dbr and run USQL on the database.  The above warning
+---------------

Under Unify 4.0, at least, it's just as easy to type:

	DBNAME=unify.db SQL

(Under 3.2, you have to link unify.db to unify.dbr before doing this; Unify
4.0 only requires the raw file for raw database volumes, not for OS files.)

And yes, this can be useful.  (Especially with Accell if you want to change
the menu label for an Accell application:  execmnt can't do it, since they
are all registered as index 0 in the coreload ACCELL, and changing it in the
Accell/Manager doesn't seem to update the menus.  The way to fix it is to
do an SQL update on the "mpscrf" table.)  Also other miscellaneous things can
be done a bit more easily.  And it is quite possible to design, using this
alone, a procedure identical in effect to the "reconfigure data dictionary"
procedure of 3.2c and 4.0 Unify.  (Dump out the table and field definitions
using SQL, then build an ordinary Unify database with these definitions and
"crdb" it.  Instant reconfigured data dictionary!  "tnull" it to create an
sunify.db for new databases, or dump the tables of an existing database and
reload them into the new one, or copy the existing data dictionary to file.db
in your reconfigure database and "scom" it with the larger size.)

+---------------
| back again.  Do you think Unify Corp. approves of this? many :-)
+---------------

Seeing as how they do exactly this in the 3.1 to 3.2 conversion, I would
guess that they do.  It's also documented in the "Accell RDBMS Reference"
manual (aka Unify 4.0 Reference).  (They even list the output of the SQL
"tables" ("records" for you 3.2'ers) command on unify.db.)
-- 
	      Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc
       {well!hoptoad,uunet!hnsurg3,cbosgd,sun!mandrill}!ncoast!allbery