What happens if you have a table filled with data and then you make a change to the table? When you make a table operational, you can specify save and restore data options. LANSA will attempt to copy the data to the new table where possible.
You may use the Save Table Data option when you wish to have the existing data in the table(s) saved before the table is deleted and recreated during a LANSA defined table generation/creation. Using this option will result in all existing data being saved to a table named ffffffff.DAT (where ffffffff is the table name) in the partition directory X_LANSA_ppp (where ppp is the partition identifier) in delimited ASCII format.
Using the Reload Table Data option will attempt to restore data back into the table using the data saved in the ffffffff.DAT file. It may not be possible to restore data in all circumstances. For example, if a column in the table is changed from alphanumeric to packed, it will not be possible to copy the data between columns.
If you have a considerable amount of data and you make major changes to the table, you may wish to write your own data reimport functions. In this case, choose only the Save table data option and then execute your own reimport function once the table compile is complete.
Also See
Table Compile Options in the Technical Reference Guide
