1. Applications Upgrade Guide for IBM i with DB2 for IBM i
  2. Table Specification Rules

Table Specification Rules

An upgrade merges your custom table specifications from one release level to the next.

An upgrade preserves these changes:

  • New tables

  • New indexes on JD Edwards EnterpriseOne tables

An upgrade replaces columns added or removed from existing JD Edwards EnterpriseOne tables, including changing field length, field type, and decimal position.

Instead of adding a new column to an existing table, use a tag file with product codes 55 through 59. For custom tag files, be aware of data item changes in the data dictionary. From one release to the next, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne might change certain data item attributes, such as data item size, which can affect data integrity and how data is stored in the database.

For this reason, use the Table Conversion tool to convert the custom tag file data to the new release level. For base files, the upgrade process takes care of the data dictionary changes by upgrading the previous database. An upgrade preserves custom indices over the custom tag files.