Adding user data to the system metadata tables Db2 UDB v8.1.9 Linux

Bob Stearns

Firstly, for documentation purposes. In the view syscat.columns there is
a column named remarks, pointing to, I suppose, to the corresponding
column in sysibm.syscolumns. Is that column reserved for DB2's use of
can I use it to document the columns of my tables? Likewise,
syscat.tables, syscat.indexes, and, I presume, most of the other entries
in syscat/sysibm.

As another question, are there any other user modifiable fields in the
tables? I have, for certain user interface reasons, created metadata
tables referring to certain tables in my schema. If there were user
defined fields in syscat/sysibm, I would prefer to use them to maintain
the data together.

Mar 16 '06 #1

Gert van der Kooij

In article <w6*************@fe03.lga>, rs**********@charter.net says...

Firstly, for documentation purposes. In the view syscat.columns there is
a column named remarks, pointing to, I suppose, to the corresponding
column in sysibm.syscolumns. Is that column reserved for DB2's use of
can I use it to document the columns of my tables? Likewise,
syscat.tables, syscat.indexes, and, I presume, most of the other entries
in syscat/sysibm.

As another question, are there any other user modifiable fields in the
tables? I have, for certain user interface reasons, created metadata
tables referring to certain tables in my schema. If there were user
defined fields in syscat/sysibm, I would prefer to use them to maintain
the data together.

You can use the COMMENT ON statement to fill the REMARKS column. AFAIK
there are no user modifiable fields in the system catalog to create
metadata. I don't know if something like that can be created with XML
data, I never worked with it.

Mar 16 '06 #2

Bob Stearns

Gert van der Kooij wrote:

In article <w6*************@fe03.lga>, rs**********@charter.net says...

Firstly, for documentation purposes. In the view syscat.columns there is
a column named remarks, pointing to, I suppose, to the corresponding
column in sysibm.syscolumns. Is that column reserved for DB2's use of
can I use it to document the columns of my tables? Likewise,
syscat.tables, syscat.indexes, and, I presume, most of the other entries
in syscat/sysibm.

As another question, are there any other user modifiable fields in the
tables? I have, for certain user interface reasons, created metadata
tables referring to certain tables in my schema. If there were user
defined fields in syscat/sysibm, I would prefer to use them to maintain
the data together.

You can use the COMMENT ON statement to fill the REMARKS column. AFAIK
there are no user modifiable fields in the system catalog to create
metadata. I don't know if something like that can be created with XML
data, I never worked with it.

Thanks for the pointer to the COMMENT statement. I'd overlooked it.

Mar 16 '06 #3