In article <34078A99.7E3D_at_us.oracle.com>, Stuart Feigin
<sfeigin_at_us.oracle.com> writes
>Take a look at the definition of ROWID in the Oracle SQL Language
>Reference Manual. The ROWID is constant for the life of the row. Now
>you just need to know what the life of the row is. It can certainly
>change if the table is exported and imported, or if the table is
>copied. I suppose there are other situations as well. There are proper
>uses for ROWID, but you ought to understand them before using it. Also
>beware of situations involving gateways. Your application may not know
>where its data comes from, and not all gateways support ROWID. Even if
>you aren't using a gateway now, you might in the future.
>
With respect, I don't need to read the SQl ref.
Use of a feature which is that vendor specific and
which cannot survive an export/import is a total
no go area in my book. Yes, you could use it in certain
specific cases, but I would find them hard if not
impossible to justify to myself.
>In my (old) copy of the SQL Language manual the format of the ROWID data
>is defined. I think it was a mistake to do that. We should NEVER allow
>customers to become dependent on the underlying structure, and the only
>way to be sure of that is to hide it. I hope we eliminate that ability
>in the future.
>
Agreed.
Steve
--
"The floggings will continue until morale improves."
Received on Sat Aug 30 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT
