Long Descriptions in Maximo

Long descriptions in Maximo are a special fields meant to store long text. Unlike all the other fields they are stored in a dedicated table called LONGDESCRIPTION. Tables link to the LONGDESCRIPTION table through their unique ID and the long description attribute is stored in a CLOB field.

Let’s change the long description of the work order ‘1000’ with few lines of text.

If we run the following SQL we can retrieve the internal ID of the work order.

select wonum, workorderid, description from workorder where wonum='1000';

Here we are interested to the WORKORDERID field which is the internal numeric identifier of the work order. This value is referenced in the LDKEY of the LONGDESCRIPTION table.
This is how we can retrieve the long description.

select * from LONGDESCRIPTION where ldkey=37 and ldownertable='WORKORDER';

Multiple attributes in the Mbo can have long descriptions. The LDOWNERCOL says which column owns the long description. The LANGCODE allows to have translated versions of the same long description field.

Long description fields can be associated with any attribute in Database Configuration setting the ‘Long Description Owner’ checkbox.

In the MAXATTRIBUTE record, the ISLDOWNER column is set to 1 if the column has a long description. For each long description owner there is a nonpersistent attribute named +”[ATTRNAME]_LONGDESCRIPTION” that will store the data in the LONGDESCRIPTION table.