Column Definition

Use the column definition segment of the CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE statement to declare the name and data type of a single column of the new external table.


Column Definition

|--+-SAMEAS--template----------------------------------+--------|
   | .-,---------------------------------------------. |   
   | V                                               | |   
   '---column--data_type--| Other Optional Clauses |-+-'   

Other Optional Clauses

|--+---------------------------------------------------------+--|
   '-EXTERNAL--CHAR--(--size--)--+-------------------------+-'   
                                 +-NULL--'--null_string--'-+     
                                 '-NOT NULL----------------'

Element	Description	Restrictions	Syntax
column	One column name for each column of the external table	For each column, you must specify a built-in data type	Identifier
data_type	Data type of the column	The data_type can be any data type supported by Informix®.	Data Type
template	Existing table with the same schema as the external table	Cannot be a subset of columns nor differ in any column data type	Database Object Name
size	Column size in bytes. Default is 1.	Integer; 1 ≤ size ≤ 32,767	Literal Number
null_string	Value to represent NULL	See Defining NULL Values.	Quoted String