Easiest way to search job descriptions

I have written about getting the library list from a job description using the QWDRJOBD API. An API is fine for doing things for one job description, but when I want to search all job descriptions that, for example, contain a library in their library list it is not easy to do with an API. A SQL view would be ideal for this.

IBM has come to rescue and I can now retrieve data from job descriptions using the SQL view JOB_DESCRIPTION_INFO. It is listed as one of the enhancements added with the latest round of IBM i Technical Refreshes, 7.3 TR5 and 7.2 TR9, but I have found it on a instance of IBM i that has not had the latest TR applied.

The view contains every column you need to know about a job description. I am not going to list them in this post, as I want to show examples of the kinds of information I have been asked from get from job descriptions in the past. If you want to see all the columns that are available there is a link at the bottom of this post to the IBM KnowledgeCenter page describing this view.

Extracting parts of date and time using a SQL function

Another of the enhancements with the latest round of Technical Refreshes, TR5 for IBM i 7.3 and TR9 for 7.2, is to the Db2 for i Extract function. This function will retrieve parts of dates and times from date, time, and timestamp variables. Prior to these TRs I could extract just basic information from the date (year, month, day) or time (hour, minute, second).

The enhancements allows me to retrieve a whole lot more information than I will ever need to know about a date or time.

Let me start with a SQL DDL table I built to contain the data for my examples:

SQL NOW and playing with timestamps

This post started off as one thing and quickly morphed into something more. I was going through all of the additions and changes in the new Technical Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 and started playing with the Db2 for i (SQL) NOW built in function.

NOW returns the current timestamp, and it has been around since at least 7.1. The latest TR allows me to give the decimal precision (fraction) of the seconds, for an example see below.

2018-10-17-18.26.32.206964

As I said now I can give NOW the decimal precision I want from zero to twelve.

Removing multiple alpha characters using SQL

I needed to remove alphabetic characters (A - Z) from a field in a file, and left justify the remaining numeric characters. These alpha characters could be before and/or after any numbers contained within the string. As usual I need data in a test file, TESTFILE, that I can play with to find a way to do what I want.

In these examples, as the subject I have only bothered with two records/rows in my table/file. Why have more when I know what works in these examples will work in any scenario.

COLUMN abc1234defghijklmnop aaBbcCDd1mmg2k3LLkkH

The problem is that I want to replace any alpha character, no matter where in the string and what order they come in.

Creating uniqueness using rowid

The Db2 for i manual offers using a row id column, ROWID, as an alternative to an Identity column for ensuring table row uniqueness. While I wrote about using a ROWID SQL data type in RPG, I did not describe how the ROWID works when defined as a column in a table.

ROWID can only be used in SQL DDL tables, I cannot add it to a DDS file, using ALTER TABLE. It is defined in a similar manner to an Identity column where I say that the columns contents are generated by Db2 for i automatically.

For example, here is the DDL table I will be using:

01 CREATE TABLE MYLIB.TESTTABLE 02 (COLUMN1 CHAR(3) NOT NULL, 03 COLUMN2 CHAR(10), 04 COLUMN3 ROWID GENERATED ALWAYS IMPLICITLY HIDDEN 05 )