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Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Which libraries did Jane create?

get the libraries owned by a specific user profile

I was asked how can I identify the libraries a person, in this example we will call her Jane, created? The person who asked the question was a self-confessed “newbie operator" who had been given some information by his employer's programmers, but doubted it was the most efficient way to get the data.

If I need to find out who created one library I would use the Display Object Description command, DSPOBJD.

DSPOBJD OBJ(MYLIB) OBJTYPE(*LIB) DETAIL(*FULL)

The following screen would be shown, and I would just look at the “Created by user" field:

                 Display Object Description - Full
                                                      Library 1 of 1
Object . . . . . . . : MYLIB      Attribute  . . . . . : PROD
  Library  . . . . . :   QSYS     Owner  . . . . . . . : QPGMR
Library ASP device . : *SYSBAS    Library ASP group  . : *SYSBAS
Type . . . . . . . . : *LIB       Primary group  . . . : *NONE

User-defined information:
  Attribute  . . . . . . . . . . :
  Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . :  For Simon Hutchinson

Creation information:
  Creation date/time . . . . . . :  08/18/19  08:23:32
  Created by user  . . . . . . . :  QSECOFR  

The questioner was given the statement shown below, and told after the output file had generated to use Query, WRKQRY, to find the libraries:

01  DSPOBJD OBJ(*ALL/*ALL) OBJTYPE(*ALL) 
02            DETAIL(*FULL) OUTPUT(*OUTFILE)
03            OUTFILE(QTEMP/@DSPOBJD)

The above DSPOBJD is going to take an extremely long time to run, as it will output every object in the partition into the outfile.

To make this more efficient I can change the parameters used by this command. As all libraries reside in the library QSYS I can change the Object parameter to only use that library. I change the Object type to look for libraries only.

01  DSPOBJD OBJ(QSYS/*ALL) OBJTYPE(*LIB) 
02            DETAIL(*FULL) OUTPUT(*OUTFILE)
03            OUTFILE(QTEMP/@DSPOBJD)

Now I have a file that just contains the libraries. The fields from this file I am interested in are:

  • ODCRTU:  Created by user
  • ODOBNM:  Object name, in this case it will be the library name
  • ODCCEN:  Create date century
  • ODCDAT:  Create date
  • ODCTIM:  Created time
  • ODOBTX:  Object text, description

Rather than use Query, I use SQL instead:

01  SELECT ODCRTU,ODOBNM,ODCCEN,ODCDAT,ODCTIM,ODOBTX
02    FROM QTEMP.@DSPOBJD
03   WHERE ODOBNM LIKE 'MYLIB%'
04   ORDER BY ODOBNM

Line 3: I just want the results for all of my libraries. They all start with: 'MYLIB' so I need to use a wildcard symbol ( % ) to find them all.

Line 4: I want the results returned in library name order.

ODCRTU   ODOBNM ODCCEN ODCDAT ODCTIM ODOBTX
-------  ------ ------ ------ ------ --------------------------------
QSECOFR  MYLIB       1 081819 082332 For Simon Hutchinson
QSECOFR  MYLIB2      1 081819 082332 For Simon Hutchinson
QSECOFR  MYLIB3      1 081819 082333 For Simon Hutchinson
QSECOFR  MYLIB4      1 081819 082333 For Simon Hutchinson
SIMON    MYLIB5      1 062520 123730 temp COLLECTION - created by SQL

There is an easier way, without the need to build a work file and then query it for the information I want. The Db2 for i view SYSSCHEMAS gives us the basic information for all the schemas in the IBM i partition. Basically a schema in IBM i is a library.

To produce the same results as before I use these columns from the view:

  • SCHEMA_CREATOR:  Who created the schema/library
  • SYSTEM_SCHEMA_NAME:  The system schema name is the library name, rather than the schema name which can be up to 128 characters
  • CREATION_TIMESTAMP:  Timestamp of when library was created
  • SCHEMA_TEXT:  Library text

Which gives me the following SQL statement:

01  SELECT SCHEMA_CREATOR,SYSTEM_SCHEMA_NAME,
02         CREATION_TIMESTAMP,SCHEMA_TEXT 
03    FROM QSYS2.SYSSCHEMAS
04   WHERE SYSTEM_SCHEMA_NAME LIKE 'MYLIB%'
05   ORDER BY SYSTEM_SCHEMA_NAME

The results are pretty much the same as before:

         SYSTEM_
SCHEMA_  SCHEMA
CREATOR  _NAME   CREATION_TIMESTAMP         SCHEMA_TEXT
-------  ------- -------------------------- -------------------------
QSECOFR  MYLIB   2019-08-18 08:23:32.000000 For Simon Hutchinson
QSECOFR  MYLIB2  2019-08-18 08:23:32.000000 For Simon Hutchinson
QSECOFR  MYLIB3  2019-08-18 08:23:33.000000 For Simon Hutchinson
QSECOFR  MYLIB4  2019-08-18 08:23:33.000000 For Simon Hutchinson
SIMON    MYLIB5  2020-06-25 12:37:30.000000 temp COLLECTION - created

This is the preferred method as I am getting the results in one step. Unlike using DSPOBJD where I have to build the file, and then get the results from that.

Now to answer the question: This is the statement I would use to list all of the libraries created by Jane:

SELECT SCHEMA_CREATOR,SYSTEM_SCHEMA_NAME,
       CREATION_TIMESTAMP,SCHEMA_TEXT 
FROM QSYS2.SYSSCHEMAS
WHERE SCHEMA_CREATOR = 'JANE'
ORDER BY SYSTEM_SCHEMA_NAME

Which gives me:

SCHEMA_  SCHEMA
CREATOR  _NAME    CREATION_TIMESTAMP         SCHEMA_TEXT
-------  -------- -------------------------- -------------------
JANE     JANESLIB 2020-04-26 13:19:20.000000 Janes library
JANE     SQLTEST3 2019-12-20 02:00:48.000000 SQL test library 3

I could get the same results by using the DSPOBJD output file I generated, but why bother to take the time to generate the output file when I can get to the same information directly.

 

You can learn more about the SYSSCHEMAS SQL view from the IBM website here.

 

This article was written for IBM i 7.4, and should work for some earlier releases too.

1 comment:

  1. This is very cool.
    The question is ?
    Wil this work on any platform.
    We as400 walking dinosaurs need to think about this.
    How could we eliminate the reference to qysy2 for example.
    Good stuff

    ReplyDelete

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