IMPORT problem/question

The offenders:
  VMS 5.4-2
  RDBMS 6.0.34
  SQLPLUS 3.0.9.7
  IMPORT The lead up:
  A table was created with one of the column_elements NOT NULL. This table was used for several months then the column_element was altered to add DEFAULT NULL. This is a clear violation and cannot be done at creation time but was allowed to be added at a later date. The table is now used again for several months. Now we decide to move the user and put them in there own tablespace. The export runs fine but on import we get error 2255 stating the above violation.

The problem:
  We then set up the table as it was in the beginning and told import to IGNORE create errors and load the table anyway. But no, IMPORT continues to stop at the offending create statment.

What we did:
  After several attempts (creating the element NOT NULL only, DEFAULT NULL only etc) we gave up and attempted to edit the Export dump file. To make a long story short this did work, we replaced the DEFAULT NULL NOT NULL with DEFAULT NULL plus 9 spaces, used VMS CONVERT to put back the orginal VMS file attributes and then IMPORT ran happy.

It worked but editing the EXPORT dump file was not something for the faint of heart. Is there another way to force IMPORT to bypass a create error? I'll leave the question as to why the user was allowed to create the violation in the first place alone (another undocumented feature?)!

Thanks for any Advice, comments etc.

Ernie
Simard_at_Sonoma.Edu Received on Wed Feb 24 1993 - 06:34:59 CET