• Guru: Table Value Constructors Build Tables On The Fly

  June 25, 2018 Ted Holt

  Because I wish to be as valuable and productive as possible to the people who pay me to program their computers, I continually search the Web for new ideas and techniques. Doing so often leads me to sites that cater to other computing platforms. Today I want to share with you some SQL techniques that I learned from Microsoft SQL Server professionals.

  These techniques are based on the Table Value Constructor (TVC), which is a group of data values, usually literals, organized into rows and columns. In its simplest form, a table value constructor is literal tabular data that is …

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• Guru: DB2 For i XML Composition And The IFS

  June 11, 2018 Michael Sansoterra

  Hey, Mike! Regarding Composing An XML Document From Relational Data, Part 1, I have built an XML document using DB2 and i. When I run the query, I get a worthless result set. How do I use the SQL XML functions to get a usable XML file?

  This question comes from reader RA, and he doesn’t exaggerate. The result set from his XML-based query looks like this:

  ....+....1....+....2....+....3....+....4....+
  ************Beginning of data************** 
  
  XMLDATA 
  -------- 
  #CGULIB#
  
    1 RECORD(S) SELECTED.
  
   ************End of Data********************
  

  Notice that DB2 for i does nothing to make the XML attractive to human eyes as the entire XML …

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• Guru: Refactoring into Routines

  May 7, 2018 Ted Holt

  In RDi and Refactoring, I illustrated the process of refactoring by taking code of a very old style and converting it little by little into something modern. I promised to write more about the subject, and today I fulfill that promise.

  The things I did in that first article — removing indicators, removing the COMP op code, removing GOTO, and renaming variables — are great, but they are not the only refactoring techniques. One of the best ways to refactor is to create new routines or improve existing routines, especially routines that can stand alone.

  To illustrate, I’ll begin …

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• Guru: LTRIM + RTRIM > TRIM

  April 2, 2018 Ted Holt

  When IBM enhances SQL for my favorite database management system, I feel so happy I could dance like Karlos Klaumannsmoller selling diabetes medicine. It is my pleasure today to let you know (in case you don’t already know) that IBM has once again enhanced two SQL functions to make them as powerful as their RPG counterparts.

  The functions to which I refer are LTRIM (left trim) and RTRIM (right trim). Until recently these functions could only remove blanks (or hexadecimal zeros, for some data types) from the beginning (left) or end (right) of a string. IBM recently added …

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• Insurer Chooses IBM i Database Re-Engineering Over Migration

  March 26, 2018 Dan Burger

  How do you want your database designed for the future and what problems have you created in the past that need to be fixed before you can think about the future? Old databases, originally designed for a business environment that has changed and continues to change, are not compatible. You may not be feeling any pain today and you may have no plans to change your business/IT alignment in the future, but much of the technology-driven business world is changing, which at some point will leave you alone on an island with a boat but no motor and no paddle. …

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• Guru: More Date And Time Conversions Using SQL

  March 26, 2018 Ted Holt

  Since many, if not most, IBM i shops store dates and times in numeric and character fields, it behooves those of us who program those systems to understand all available date- and time-conversion tools. A conversation with a fellow attendee of the recent RPG & DB2 Summit made me realize that I had not written about certain SQL conversion methods.

  IBM i programmers need to convert date, time, and timestamp data from one format to another for at least two reasons. First, we can’t do date and time arithmetic with numeric and character fields. Second, the people whom we serve …

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• TEMBO Bolsters Database Modernization Kit

  March 26, 2018 Alex Woodie

  TEMBO Technology Lab is shipping a new release of its software designed to help IBM i shops modernize their databases for the SQL age. The South African company made mostly minor tweaks to its flagship product, dubbed AO Foundation, which should position the product to do more down the road.

  Since it entered the IBM i discussion in 2012, TEMBO has been building database modernization tools and evangelizing the benefits of the SQL Query Engine (SQE) as the modern, up-to-date database engine that IBM i shops should strive to use, as opposed to the older CQE engine that used DDS …

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• A Closer Look At Enhancements To Integrated Web Services

  March 21, 2018 Dan Burger

  Technology Refresh 8 for IBM i 7.2 and TR4 for IBM i 7.3 became available last week. One of the enhancements in this TR pertains to the Integrated Web Services (IWS), which Business Architect for IBM i Application Development Tim Rowe calls IWS “one of our most widely used pieces of software from an integrated perspective.”

  Web services provide the capability to expose the database to outside developers via APIs and Web services. Although that thought brings a shiver down the spine of many developers who learned the proprietary ways of the AS/400, multi-platform integration is the modern development path. …

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• Guru: Use SQL To Find Duplicate Source Code

  March 12, 2018 Ted Holt

  According to Brian Tracy, “good habits are hard to develop but easy to live with; bad habits are easy to develop but hard to live with. The habits you have and the habits that have you will determine almost everything you achieve or fail to achieve.” This is as true in programming as in anything else we may do.

  Unfortunately, even those of us who strive for good work habits often have to follow the work of people who did not. One bad habit I come across occasionally is known in software engineering as WET solutions. WET stands for “write …

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• IT Jungle Readers Respond To Tech Refreshes

  February 28, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM took some people in the IBM i community by surprise when it unveiled the latest Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3 two weeks ago. Support for new Power9 servers obviously headlines the news, but several other notable new features are worth mentioning. We asked IT Jungle readers to chime in on the parts they liked best.

  Birgitta Hauser, a developer with Toolmaker Advanced Efficiency in Germany, says she likes the productivity enhancements that TRs bring, and the latest TRs are no different.

  “Because I’m at first an IBM i programmer, with the main focus on RPG and …

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