Retrieving the description for the Audit Journal Entry Types

I have, to date, been disappointed that I could not programmatically retrieve a description for the 420 Audit journal entry types. Referring to IBM's documentation was just not practical. A new SQL View in the Fall 2025 Technical Refreshes has given me what I wanted, a list of all the journal entry types with their descriptions.

The View is JOURNAL_CODE_INFO, which is found in the library QSYS2. It contains the following columns:

1. JOURNAL_CODE:  The journal code
2. JOURNAL_CODE_DESCRIPTION:  Description of the Journal code
3. JOURNAL_ENTRY_TYPE:  Journal entry type
4. JOURNAL_ENTRY_TYPE_DESCRIPTION:  Description for the journal entry type

The journal codes are for a specific "action", while the Journal Entry Type is the type of information. You can see this with the new View with the following statement:

01 SELECT * FROM QSYS2.JOURNAL_CODE_INFO ;

I am only going to show the first few results are there are too many to show here.

JOURNAL JOURNAL _ _ENTRY JOURNAL_ENTRY_ _CODE CODE_DESCRIPTION _TYPE TYPE_DESCRIPTION ------- ------------------------- ------- ------------------------- A System accounting entry DP Direct print information A System accounting entry JB Job accounting segment A System accounting entry SP Spooled print information B Integrated file system AA Change audit attribute B Integrated file system AJ Start of apply

If I wanted to make a list of all the Journal Codes I can do so with the following:

01 SELECT JOURNAL_CODE, 02 ANY_VALUE(JOURNAL_CODE_DESCRIPTION) AS "Description" 03 FROM QSYS2.JOURNAL_CODE_INFO 04 GROUP BY JOURNAL_CODE 05 ORDER BY JOURNAL_CODE ;

Line 2: As I am going to group my results by Journal Code, I use the ANY_VALUE scalar function to add the description column, without needing to add it to the GROUP BY clause.

The above generates the following unique list. As I mentioned before this is just the first few rows of the results.

JOURNAL_CODE Description ------------ ----------------------------- A System accounting entry B Integrated file system C Commitment control operation D Database file operation E Data area operation

I can do the same for the Journal Entry types:

01 SELECT JOURNAL_ENTRY_TYPE AS "Jrn type", 02 ANY_VALUE(JOURNAL_ENTRY_TYPE_DESCRIPTION) AS "Description" 03 FROM QSYS2.JOURNAL_CODE_INFO 04 GROUP BY JOURNAL_ENTRY_TYPE 05 ORDER BY JOURNAL_ENTRY_TYPE ;

Line 2: As I am using the GROUP BY clause the ANY_VALUE scalar function to include the Journal Entry Type Description.

The first few results from the above are:

Jrn type Description -------- -------------------------- AA Change audit attribute AC Add RI constraint AD Change auditing attribute AF Authority failure AJ Start of apply

I can produce a list of the Audit Journal types the Audit journals contain on the server I am working upon using the following:

01 WITH T0 (JTYPE,COUNT) AS 02 (SELECT JOURNAL_ENTRY_TYPE,COUNT(*) 03 FROM TABLE(DISPLAY_JOURNAL('QSYS','QAUDJRN')) 04 GROUP BY JOURNAL_ENTRY_TYPE 05 ORDER BY JOURNAL_ENTRY_TYPE) 06 SELECT T0.JTYPE,JOURNAL_ENTRY_TYPE_DESCRIPTION 07 FROM T0,QSYS2.JOURNAL_CODE_INFO 08 WHERE JTYPE = JOURNAL_ENTRY_TYPE 09 ORDER BY T0.JTYPE ;

I have to break this into two parts, using a Common Table Expression, CTE, as I cannot GROUP BY a set of results from a Table expression and join it to a View.

Lines 1 – 5: Here I use the DISPLAY_JOURNAL Table function to get a list of the Journal Entry Types and a count of them.

Lines 6 – 9: This statement takes the results from the CTE Table T0 and joins them with the JOURNAL_CODE_INFO to add the description to the results.

The first few results from the partition I am using look like:

JOURNAL_ENTRY_ JTYPE TYPE_DESCRIPTION ----- ------------------------- AD Change auditing attribute AF Authority failure AP Program adopt CA Object authority changed CD Command string

I entered an IBM Idea for this, so you will not be surprised that I am happy we now have a list of all the Journal Entry Types in a format we can easily use in any SQL expression.

 

You can learn more about the JOURNAL_CODE_INFO SQL View from the IBM website here.

 

This article was written for IBM i 7.6 TR1 and 7.5 TR7.