Enhance DBUNLOAD to ignore obsolete system database options

[VolkerBarth]

When unloading older databases with newer DBUNLOAD versions and generating a default reload.sql file, that file may contain SET OPTION statements for system options that have been discontinued in the new version, so when running it against a new database, DBISQL may warn about "unknown" options.

For example, the following options have been disposed somewhere between v8 and v12 (and there are a lot of those):

SET OPTION "PUBLIC"."Query_plan_on_open" = 'Off'
go
SET OPTION "PUBLIC"."Automatic_timestamp" = 'Off'
go

(To be honest, I'm not familiar with most of these options, they will have had their default value, as usual.)

It's not really easy to find out when older options have been disposed (they are not necessarily documented in newer doc sets) and AFAIK they could also be mistaken for user-defined options. (I'm not sure on that as we don't use such options.)

But apparently the database engine is able to differentiate between obsolete system options and user-defined options when applying a RELOAD.sql file (at least I think it would not ignore the latter ones), therefore it might also be possible to ignore them when reloading the database.

I'd think an option to tell DBUNLOAD to ignore those options would be helpful. It should not do so by default as the generated file could be used with an older database that still would use these options.

[VolkerBarth]

That's one of the moments I'd like to downvote my own post - but that's prevented. It should not, methinks (in contrast to upvotes, of course...).

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

In general the newer dbunload (ran at the version to upgrade to) should be aware of these things and should detect and handle them. For the 2 options identified both of those were removed in Version 11 (along with many others documented) and, as such, dbunload from either version 11 or newer versions should just skip them as part of the unload.

I do see that both V11 and V12 have the gear to ignore those. Is it possible your reload.sql was somehow created with an older dbunload (pre-V11)?

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

Sorry for my foolish suggestion - yes, you are fully correct, I had used a v12 dbunload to unload the data but then used a (modified) reload.sql file originally built with v8 to rebuild the database - and of course that did not ignore v8 options.

In contrast, a v12 dbunload does already ignore the obsolete options so my suggestion is moot...

One more situation just fitting to the Golden Watcom Rule... - thanks for taking care of us:)