In regards to the excellent tip by Ramakrishna Chavalla on use of the CHGPF, this command may also be used to change attributes of a field. Numeric fields may be changed from zoned to packed, and from packed to zoned. Field sizes may be increased. Field sizes may also be decreased, but at the risk of losing (corrupting) data. The technique is the same; redefine the field attributes in the DDS source, and use the CHGPF command, supplying the following:
Name of the Physical file
Name of the library
Name of the source physical file
Name of the library in which the source Physical file exists.
I would highly recommend backing up the physical file before performing the CHGPF command.
