Any implications of changing the type of a property of a persistent class from Timestamp to String?
In a typical database, changing the type of a column from some kind of date/time to a string would require a degree of migration effort for existing values. In Caché, my suspicion is that this is not the case, and I could simply change a property definition from %Timestamp to %String (MAXLEN = "30") and recompile, without needing to worry about damaging the existing data stored for this property. Is this correct? Or would I find the existing data in this property being lost or corrupted?
Thanks in anticipation
Product version: Caché 2018.1
You can change the definition, the data remains as is. But you have to take care about your applications, like SQL-queries. For example a DATEPART() function could refuse to work because a property, defined as %String, may contain everything.
Also, any indices on such field would need to be rebuild. Indices on %String properties are expected to start with an empty space thus your queries using these indices won't return any existing (non-updated) rows.
except if
But rebuild of indices is still a must or good practice