I am sometimes asked strange questions at conferences. A recent example is: “Which operation code do you use most in RPG?” After overcoming my initial reaction of wondering what the questioner was smoking (and where I could get some), I gave the question some thought. And the answer is: The DSPLY operation.

Now, before you start to wonder what I am smoking (and where you can get some), let me explain. Firstly, the DSPLY operation will never see its way into production code, I only use it in test programs (more in a minute). Secondly, and what a lot of

In the second tip of this series, I explored three new features introduced in DB2 for i 7.2: KEEP IN MEMORY clause; AUTONOMOUS PROCEDURE; and the CHECK CONSTRAINT VIOLATION clause. This tip aims to keep the momentum going by exploring a handful of remaining miscellaneous features, in no particular order.

TABLE_NAME And TABLE_SCHEMA Scalar Functions

These two new functions exist in the SYSIBM schema and are used to lookup base information about an alias. Say an alias is defined on a DB2 remote system table on a system named WASHINGTON:

CREATE ALIAS DATALIB.WASHINGTON_TRANSACTIONS FOR
WASHINGTON.ADVWORKS.TRANSACTIONHISTORY;

The following VALUES statement will

For a recent audit, I had to export IBM i spooled file data into Excel spreadsheets to send to our auditors. If you have a similar need for spooled file to Excel conversion, here’s my drill for importing spool file data into an Excel 2010 spreadsheet.

One Goal, Two Paths

You can export spooled file data to an Excel file in two ways: by using a commercial product or by using System i Navigator and the Text Import Wizard from Microsoft Excel 2010.

If you have a third-party product that exports spooled files to Excel format, then by all means