Regarding MaxDB Field with value ?

[Former Member]

Dear Experts,

I have one concern regarding the MaxDB field value. The scenario is that we have migrated a 2.5 application to 7.1. If you have MaxDb installed then you just goto USER_AUTHORIZATION Table & check the value of field EXPIRATION_DATE, EXPIRATION_TIME, the value it shows is "?" Just wish to know what does this value mean.... does it mean a NULL or BLANK.

The way in which its related to my issue is that I am trying to create some record from client & when I see the same record in MaxDB it shows ? value for some field say X for which I havent entered any value while creating the record itself. so now when I try to query the record considering that field X(value being ?) creates a problem.

Someone please let me know what does this ? mean.

NOTE: When I check for table USER_AUTHORIZATION in MaxDB for field EXPIRATION_DATE the default value is "?". & I guess as no value is assigned to this table field its retaining that "?" value.

Thanks & Regards,

Saptak Kulkarni

Edited by: Saptak Kulkarni on Feb 19, 2010 8:46 AM

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

as per my knowledge the ? means NULL in MaxDB. So no value is defined.

Regards,

Oliver

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Oliver,

Thanks for your inputs, But my issue remains unresolved..Pls have a look below..

I will like to explain the issue in another way here..

we have a field "A" where in code while creating a record we are inserting a value "" (means blank) for that field in local database(MaxDB). Now when I query the MaxDB with a sql-query saying

select * from Tablename where A (Field-Name) <> (not-equals) 'X' " .... it should return all the entries which dont have value as "X", even the ones with value as "" (blank). But its not returning the entries with value "".

Morever after inserting a blank in 'A' field when I see value of that in MaxDB it shows a '?' instead of "".

We also tried same query in SQL studio-query builder at database level & the output is same.

Pls give your inputs...

Regards,

Saptak.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

this is strange!?!

Is A a keyfied?

What if you say: select * from table? Then you should get everythng - is the value part of this selection?

Regards,

Oliver

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Dear Oliver,

Field is not key field.

That is the strangest part. When we query the database in query builder, as select * from table we get all the record. When we are querying the database as select * from table where field = null / select * from table where field = '' / select * from table where field != 'XYZ' we get no records.

Another thing we found out is we are querying the database as select * from table in Java code and manually looping through each record and trying to extract the value of the field.............. It is '' (blank......... same as what we have stored initially.)

Any guess on this?

Thanks in Advance,

Saptak.