Informix: Update Statement Error In WebSphere - sql

Question

I am trying to run this update statement but informix doesn't allow me to.
I have a table, named ITEMS and below I have selected some records from it.
SELECT SHORT_SKU, ITEMS."STYLE" FROM ITEMS;
SHORT_SKU STYLE
--------- -----
01846173 null
01811752 null
01811748 null
Trying to run the below UPDATE statement, informix says syntax error.
UPDATE ITEMS SET ITEMS."STYLE" = 'M' WHERE SHORT_SKU = '01846173';
^ syntax error here
Then I changed (as below) and got "Column (style) not found in any table in the query (or SLV is undefined)."
UPDATE ITEMS SET STYLE = 'M' WHERE SHORT_SKU = '01846173';
How do I update the "STYLE" field?
UPDATE 1
I did a change to one of WAS data source's custom properties, ifxDELIMIDENT. Originally it was blank. So, I changed it to true. Restarted WAS. And I couldn't login to our application. SQLExceptions were thrown by WAS but was not able to see the stack trace because WAS has truncated the last few lines. After changing the property back to blank, I was able to login to our application.
I tried another approach, which was to write a Java class that updates the ITEMMST.STYLE column. I executed this from a shell script. In the shell script, I defined and exported the variable DELIMIDENT with the value 'Y'. But I am still getting 'Syntax error'.
UPDATE 2
I managed to update the column. This is done by adding the 'DELIMIDENT=Y' property at the end of the connection string which will be passed to the DriverManager object when opening the database connection.
But, this won't work for our web application because it uses the WebSphere data source to create the db connection. It would be super if there's a way to set this property in the Informix environment itself.

Answer 1

Try:
UPDATE ITEMS SET "STYLE" = 'M' WHERE SHORT_SKU = '01846173';
It must be that STYLE is a reserved word so you must double-quote it to refer to the column. But standard UPDATE syntax doesn't allow you to prefix column names with the table name in the SET clause (since you can only be updating the columns of one table: the table mentioned in the UPDATE).

Answer 2

The right Syntax would be
UPDATE ITEMS SET STYLE = 'M' WHERE SHORT_SKU = '01846173';
As stated on IBM Documentation but as STYLE is a reserved word i guess your getting problems, Read IBM Recommendation on this.
Anyway you may find a work arround oat this link, otherwise you may consider changing the column name.

Answer 3

I am not aware of STYLE being a keyword in Informix (but I haven't gone to look for it). However, you can usually use keywords as column names etc without much problem.
If you must quote it, you need to set the DELIMIDENT environment variable - the value doesn't matter, but use DELIMIDENT=1 for concreteness. This enables SQL standard 'delimited identifiers', where double quotes surround identifiers (column names, table names, etc) and single quotes surround strings. (Normally, you can use either single quotes or double quotes around strings.)
One other point: if you use delimited identifiers, they also become case-sensitive (whereas normally, identifiers are case-insensitive). So you need to know how the STYLE column is stored in the system catalog. In most databases, they will be in lower-case. There's an outside chance that in a MODE ANSI database, they are stored in upper-case (but it is a while since I looked to make sure).

Answer 4

Use this query:
UPDATE ITEMS SET ITEMS.STYLE = 'M' WHERE SHORT_SKU = '01846173';
I think double quotes not required for column name.
Updated Answer 1:
Error Description-
-217 Column column-name not found in any table in the query
(or SLV is undefined).
The name appears in the select list or WHERE clause of this query but is
not defined in a table and does not appear as a statement local variable
(SLV) definition. Check that the column name or SLV name and the names of
the selected tables are spelled as you intended.
If all names are spelled correctly, you are not using the right tables,
the database has been changed, or you have not defined the SLV. If the
name not found is a reference to a column, that column might have been
renamed or dropped. If the name not found represents an SLV and you
defined the SLV in the statement, make sure that the SLV definition
appears before all other references to that SLV name.
This error message can also appear during the execution of an ALTER TABLE
statement when the engine tries to update views that depend on the table.
More info link
Updated Answer 2:
If not possible to change column name then get more information about SLV.
You can refer following links for description and use of SLV:
link1
link2
link3

Answer 5

There are 2 solutions for this.
Set the Informix JDBC data source 'ifxDELIMIDENT' property to 'true'
Rename the affected table columns
For the 1st option, we had a problem after setting the data source to 'true'. Suddenly all our queries did not work. After much troubleshooting, we found out that by setting the 'ifxDELIMIDENT' property to 'true', it also changed Informix to be case sensitive. In our Java code, we have all the column names in uppercase, and in Informix (Example: resultSet.getString("STYLE")), but the table column names are lowercase (Example: 'style'). This was why after changing this property, we were not able to login to our application Unfortunately this behavior was not documented anywhere in IBM's Info Centre nor in the internet.
We opted for the 2nd option which involved changing the affected column names to another column name (Example: Changed 'STYLE' to 'ITEM_STYLE').