SAP Note 28233 - NULL values in field FIELDSLG of table DDNTF

Symptom:

The use of a structure (database table or internal table), whose generated field catalog in system table DDNTF reaches or exceeds the length of 32768, either causes an endless loop in R/3 on informix or the R/3 process terminates with a 'core'.
Typical terminations which occurred up to now affected either the very 'wide' table CE8xxxx or the R/3 upgrade from 2.2E to 2.2F (in the 'build_ftab' function).
Cause and prerequisites

There is a program error in the database interface.

The use of 2-byte integers to present and transfer the length of the field catalog generated to the database causes in cases where the length 32768 (0x8000) is either reached or exceeded a NULL value to be mistakenly stored in the informix database during the generation of a large structure. Since field catalogs exceeding this length are blocked, this error appears with all structures that are generated in which the length of the field catalog reaches or exceeds this value.

Solution

This error can only be rectified by using a corrected R/3 kernel. The error is corrected as of

• 2.1L/2.2F, patch level 6 (see Note 19466)

• 2.2G

• 3.0B
  

After the R/3 upgrade has been completed or after the corresponding R/3 kernel has been applied, the nametab of the affected structure must be reactivated. First delete the data records belonging to the structure in system tables DDNTT and DDNTF by means of dbaccess using:
DELETE FROM DDNTT WHERE TABNAME = ''
DELETE FROM DDNTF WHERE TABNAME = ''

The structure can now be activated using Transaction SE11.

Additional key words

KEU5; CE8xxxx, CE8COB1, CE8E001, CE8Z001, NAMETAB, DDNTF, NULL, DB_PGNTAB, BUILD_FTAB, SEGMENTATION FAULT, CORE