I have to build a file for input to another system. All fields are fixed-length, and numeric values are to be edited and right-adjusted. SQL’s CHAR function takes care of the editing requirement, but the result is left-adjusted. How do I right-adjust an edited numeric value? Or will I have to rewrite my program using native I/O operations?

–Sarah

On the surface, this seemed like an easy request. It turned to be a little more complicated than I had thought.

I suggested Sarah use the SPACE function to generate enough leading blanks to force right alignment. For example, the following

We’ve all heard by now that defining tables using DDS is becoming outdated and that developers need to use SQL in order to access the relatively new data types, including DATALINK and Large Objects (BLOB, CLOB, and DBCLOB).

I recently ran into a situation where I wanted to change a field in an existing table to use the new (as of V5R3) BINARY data type for encrypting credit card data. (Recall that the BINARY data type is similar to character data tagged with a CCSID of 65535. However, data in a BINARY column will never be translated whereas the character

Every day, I have to transfer a variable number of files from my Windows server to my AS/400. I need to FTP all the files in the same directory and each transferable file begins with the same prefix, ABCFILE (ABCFILE.2006.09.11.2, ABCFILE.2006.09.11.3, etc). Once I get the files to the AS/400, I’d like to combine them into one file that’s simply called ABCFILE. Got any ideas?

–Mark

I can tell you how to FTP multiple files at the same time, but I’m not too sure about the best method for combining them. Here’s what I’m thinking.

For transferring multiple Windows files