Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Use Select to retrieve one record of data

select into is used to retrieve one record from a file

The germ for this post came from a question I was asked by a reader of this blog:

In SQLRPG do I have to define cursor, open cursor, fetch, close cursor if I only want one record?

That is a lot of work just to retrieve one record. Fortunately there is a very simple method where I can retrieve a field, multiple fields, the entire record, or join to another record, etc providing I am just returning one record/row.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

The versatile Clear operation code

use the clear operation code to initialize field, variable, record format. no more z-add

When I wrote about using DEFAULT in SQL statements it made me think if there is an equivalent in RPG. The Clear operation code sprung to mind. CLEAR has been around for many releases, including in RPGIII. It initializes the value of a variable, field, data structure, array, record format, etc. to the data type's default value.

I use CLEAR extensively because…

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

How to monitor for function keys when prompting a command

In an earlier post I wrote about prompting commands in a CL program, and allow you to change some of the command's parameters. But I did not give the logic on how to cope if the F3, Exit, or F12, Cancel, keys were pressed.

How to differentiate between the F3 and F12 keys being pressed was a subject of a discussion in one of the Facebook groups I am a member of. As I should have mention this in my earlier post I thought I would give an example of how I would do this.

The person asking the question was prompting the Display User Profile command, DSPUSRPRF, and need to:

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Run a SQL statement on another IBM i

strqmqry to get data from another ibm i

I work in an environment with many different IBM i systems. I use the word "systems" as some of these are partitions on the same PowerSystems server, while others reside on different servers. Often there is a need to extract information from one system, and send it to another where it will be used.

I have previously written about using DDM files to get information from other systems. But as I use SQL more I find they are limiting, as I cannot extract information from a DDM file using SQL statements. If only there was a way to extract data from one system by using a SQL Select statement issued from a second system.

After searching the new KnowledgeCenter I discovered a way!