Dear Esteemed Colleagues:

We made it through another year! Thanks to you, along with our writers and advertisers, this august publication is 11 years old! Who’da thunk it? Let’s wind up 2012 with various and sundry items that you sent my way.

–Ted

Hey, Ted:

I am using SQL to query an index, similar to what I do for a logical file. The system is responding with error SQL7011 (SOMEINDEX in SOMELIB not table, view, or physical file.) Could you please shed some light on why it is happening?

–Jabir

What you’re trying to do makes sense from

Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. This code was updated on 12/22/14.

Everybody needs a project–something to putter with in order to relieve stress and deal with the vicissitudes of life. I would like to tell you about a project that I’ve been working on for the past few months. I only wrote it for the fun of it, but it has already come in handy.

It seems that not a week goes by without someone asking me to stop providing them a report as a PDF and give it to them in Excel

Dealing with IBM i third-party maintenance can be a pain. You buy a software package once, but wind up paying yearly maintenance bills for the life of the application, paying 15 percent or more of the original purchase price per year. And the vendor may increase the cost on a yearly basis. This week, I’ll discuss software maintenance fees and give you some tips on keeping your maintenance costs down.

Basic IBM i Maintenance

Third-party software maintenance is a necessary but expensive proposition for IBM i vendors. Software vendors need to charge yearly maintenance to provide cash flow for creating