RIGHT/LEFT Justify

cosec · Post by **cosec** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 2:50 am

When I view the records in the database through datastage it seems all the fields are left justified...how could I left Justify non numeric fields and Right justify numeric fields....I used the FMT Function but I dont think I am doing it right ... Pls advice

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:08 am

Do you mean with "view data" in the designer or from somewhere else? The FMT function will work from the command line, but has nothing to do with "view data", where the datatypes and widths play a role in how things are displayed.

cosec · Post by **cosec** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:12 am

Yes using the View Data both in the designer and the DB2 Client it shows as left justified.

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:18 am

You threw me off with FMT reference, since that isn't applicable to "view data". You cannot right justify in that window, the only formatting DS really uses is the field width to presize the display width.

cosec · Post by **cosec** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 11:09 am

I want the fields to be stored in the database as right justified...how do i accomplish that throuhg datastage

ArndW wrote:You threw me off with FMT reference, since that isn't applicable to "view data". You cannot right justify in that window, the only formatting DS really uses is the field width to presize the display w ...

narasimha · Post by **narasimha** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 11:27 am

cosec wrote:I want the fields to be stored in the database as right justified...how do i accomplish that throuhg datastage

You don't have to do anything special in Datastage. Check in your database using an appropriate tool to confirm.

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 11:37 am

Think in terms of, "How would I do this outside DataStage?" Is it even possible. I say have a chat with your friendly neighbourhood DBA.

chulett · Post by **chulett** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 11:52 am

cosec wrote:I want the fields to be stored in the database as right justified...

Um... why?

One generally doesn't worry about 'justification' inside a database. Perhaps if we were talking about a flat file with specific requirements on string fields, but since we're not...

You need to do this or just want to do this? What field datatypes are we talking about here? Unless for some odd reason you've been given explicit requirements to right justify string fields, doing so could just screw up any process using that data that's not expecting it to be stored like that.

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 7:23 pm

Numbers cannot be stored justified. If you want a string to be stored "right justified" then you need to explicitly pad the string with spaces on the left. Note that some datatypes such as VarChar2 will strip those leading spaces out of the string! Justification is never a data value issue, just a display method.

Craig - oops, I didn't notice your post until after I had submitted mine. Sorry for duplicating the content.