The fields of the IfxDocDesc row data type

The IfxDocDesc row data type has four fields: format, version, location, and params.

The format field

This field is used to store format information for the text document. The field is not used by the DataBlade® module, so you can enter any text you want, including NULL. You can use this field for record keeping, for example.

An example of a value for this field is MS Word for a Microsoft™ Word document.

The version field

This field is used to store version information for the text document, based on the information in its format field. The field is not used by the DataBlade module, so you can enter any text you want, including NULL. You can use this field for record keeping, for example.

An example of a value for this field is 7.0, which indicates the version of Microsoft Word used to create the document.

The location field

LLD_Locator, the data type of the location field, is a named row data type, defined as follows:

CREATE ROW TYPE LLD_Locator
(
   lo_protocol            CHAR(18),
   lo_pointer            LLD_Lob,
   lo_location            LVARCHAR
);

LLD_Locator is defined in the HCL® OneDB® Large Object Locator DataBlade Module, one of the DataBlade modules required by the .

Use the three fields of LLD_Locator to specify the location of your text document, either in the database itself or a file on the operating system file system.

The following table summarizes the information about the fields of the LLD_Locator data type.


Field	Description
lo_protocol	Identifies the type of the large object.
lo_pointer	Points to a smart large object, or `NULL` if anything other than a smart large object.
lo_location	Points to the large object, if not a smart large object. Set to `NULL` if it is a smart large object.

Important: LLD_Lob, the data type of the lo_pointer field of the LLD_Locator data type, is a complex data type derived from HCL OneDB similar to the CLOB and BLOB types, but in addition to pointing to the location of a smart large object, it specifies whether the object contains binary or character data.

The value of the lo_protocol field determines the values of the other LLD_Locator fields. The following table lists the currently available protocols and summarizes the values for the other fields for each protocol.


lo_protocol	lo_pointer	lo_location	Description
IFX_BLOB	Smart large object pointer (LLD_Lob)	NULL	Smart large object that might contain binary data
IFX_CLOB	Smart large object pointer (LLD_Lob)	NULL	Smart large object that only contains character data
IFX_FILE	NULL	Full file path name	Operating system file on the database server machine

For a complete description of the LLD_Locator and LLD_Lob data types, see the HCL OneDB Database Extensions User's Guide.

The params field

Reserved for use by the etx access method. When you load data into a table, specify NULL.

Important: If you insert NULL into any of the fields of an IfxDocDesc column, you must explicitly cast it to its data type in the INSERT statement. The same is true for UPDATE statements that update the value to NULL. This is true for all fields of all row types in HCL OneDB, Version 9.x.