IBM/db2forzosdeveloperextension-about

Catalog interrogation - Completeness of information provided (use case "Package")

Opened this issue · 2 comments

FALLAI-Denis commented

Description of the feature or enhancement

Hi,

When querying the properties of a "Package", a priori the result of a query of the SYSBIBM.SYSPACKAGE catalog table, I notice that a lot of information are not returned.

In particular, I note the absence of the following information:

  • PDSNAME: the name of the PDS (library) in which the package's DBRM is a member.
  • LASTUSED: the last date that the package was used.

The catalog tables evolve with the Db2 versions, but for the 2 columns mentioned above, they have been present for several versions of Db2, (since Db2 V10 for LASTUSED).

The information returned by querying the catalog should be exhaustive, and probably the extension should adapt its queries and its restitutions according to the version of Db2.

Also to see if the names of the properties displayed should not be the names of the columns of the Db2 catalog tables because it is not always easy to make the mapping.
It might also be necessary for the properties to be returned in the same order as the catalog table queried.

Thanks.

amadhavia commented

Hi Denis,

Thank you for putting this request for the enhancement.
During the design of catalog navigation, we had to pick and choose which columns to display as there is limited real-estate to display the data.
We plan to expand this feature to allow the end user to choose which columns he/she would like to view in our future release. At that time, we will look at the ordering of the columns as well.

Thanks!

  • 👍1
FALLAI-Denis commented

Hi,

Thank you for your response and the announcement of the planned developments.

If the end user will be able to choose the columns to display, I suggest providing (at least) two levels of detail:

  • a quick view with some essential properties (columns)
  • a detailed view with all properties (columns)

So for each table in the catalog, provide several customizable views:

  • the view to use for navigation in the catalog, with first-level information and links to other related objects (tables) in the catalog accessible from the current object (table)
  • the view to display the main properties (columns) of the current object (table)
  • the view to display all the properties (columns) of the current object (table)

I think it is better to display the column names of the catalog tables rather than labels which can create confusion by false interpretation of meaning.
The use of column names should allow automatic discovery of these columns and automatically adapt to the catalog version.