Not really a question, but documentation of a database conversion problem I have encountered before (so if no one else ever has this problem, at least I will be able to find my own answer next time the problem occurs).

Trying to do a dbunload in-place (-an option), I receive the message Syntax error near '(end of line)' on line 1 When this happens, I always fear the worst: must be corruption in the database, even though my daily dbvalid runs show no errors.

To discover the real cause of the problem, I had to do a straight unload, create a new .db file, and the run the reload script in ISQL. Now I receive the real error.

In this case, it was CREATE INDEX "" ON "app_owner"."idond_donation_detail" ( "idona_id" ) and I am able to see that there was an index that never had an object name. Apparently acceptable to SQLA 8, but not to 11 or 12.

It would be great if dbunload in-place would provide better information as the the problem. But I guess in the end, it takes a manual process to sleuth out the incompatible problem.