How does Uniface handle large text fields in DBMSs that don support it?
Uniface handles text fields of “unlimited” length by using overflow tables. In the base entity containing the long text field, Uniface stores the beginning part of the field. In the overflow table, Uniface breaks the remaining text into a series of records. The existence of this overflow table is completely transparent to any development processing. When a record is read from the base entity, Uniface automatically goes to the overflow table, retrieves all the related records, and chains the long text field back together. Similarly, upon update, Uniface does the reverse, breaking the record into pieces. The processing required to manage long text fields is totally hidden, therefore. Points for consideration The name of the overflow table is always the name of the base table with an O prefix. When examining the tables accessed by your application in the database, do not be surprised by extra tables with names beginning with O. Depending upon the data type selected in Uniface, the physica
