Want a Fast and Easy Way To Sort Subfile Data?
by Susan Gantner

Sorting data is something RPG programs often need to do. If it's just a simple single field array you're sorting in order to use the much faster binary search possible with %Lookup, for example, then SORTA works well and is simple. But what if it is a more complex task like sorting the data in a subfile on a user-selected column? Surely you need some more involved techniques, such as retrieving the data from the database again using a different ORDER BY on an SQL SELECT statement or using a different logical file or you could use the qsort C function for sorting the array elements in the program. Something as simple as SORTA can't be used for that, right? READ MORE >

Testing for Valid Data Representation in SQL
Hey Mike:

How can I tell if a character column contains a valid representation of numeric data? I have a column expression in a Select statement that needs to convert character Column A to numeric only when it contains a valid numeric representation. If Column A doesn't contain a numeric representation, then I need to convert Column B to numeric. READ MORE >