On Fri, 17 Feb 2023 20:39:04 -0600 Kevin Monceaux <Kevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > The one in particular I'm wondering about at the moment is how to > handle PostgreSQL unlimited character varying fields in COBOL. Hi Kevin, Can you give me a sense of the kind of information stored in that column? If it's what it should be -- an atomic datum -- then it's misdefined in the database, and the question of how to handle it is a management problem, not a technical one (because the display will truncate the data arbitrarily). If it's JSON or XML, that's really a 1NF problem: a database design error resulting in a technical parsing hurdle. If it's an inseparable BLOB, like a PDF, then it has to be treated as a string of bits. Very large fields are unusual in databases, and present unusual difficulties when they crop up. In a lower-level interface like ODBC, there are cursor-like operations that read/write partial columns. I don't know of similar functionality in any ESQL system. --jkl
