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Guru: Use SQL To Replace Reports

June 14, 2021 Ted Holt

Does anybody write report programs anymore? If so, why? Reports are so twentieth-century. The people we serve want spreadsheets, Web pages, cell-phone apps and other modern conveniences. What we need is an easy way to make our report programs write the same information to modern interfaces without having to perform major surgery on them.

Some 10 years or so ago, I built a scripting language to enable me to reformat spooled files into stream files in CSV format. I called my utility BASS. It was, and continues to be, a successful project.

But BASS is not the only way …
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Guru: Error Handling in SQL PL, Part 2

October 16, 2017 Ted Holt

In the previous episode of this exciting, action-packed series, I introduced you to the exception-handling methods that IBM has built into SQL PL. The cliff-hanger has lasted four months now, much too long. It’s high time I explained RESIGNAL, as I promised I would. I will explain SIGNAL while I’m at it.

Before I start the syntax lesson, I need to explain a bit of philosophy. I use the hit-the-ball-drag-Harry method of exception-handling when I embed SQL in RPG and COBOL programs. That is, I execute a command, test the SQL state, execute a command, test the SQL state, …
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Guru: Error Handling in SQL PL, Part 1

June 12, 2017 Ted Holt

I once fancied myself a logical thinker. I changed my mind when I started programming computers. I quickly realized that I was incapable of writing an error-free program. Chalk up another valuable lesson to experience. More experience taught me to program for both expected and unexpected conditions, and now I apply that concept to all languages that I use, including SQL PL.

SQL PL has excellent exception-handling methods, and they’re not hard to use. In this article and Part 2 to follow, we look at how DB2 informs you that your SQL request worked correctly or not. Next, we’ll take …
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Guru: SQL PL Labels

February 13, 2017 Ted Holt

SQL PL, the powerful, easy-to-learn procedural database language that IBM ships with all versions of DB2, allows you to identify any executable statement or compound statement with a label. I can’t think of a better day than today for us to think about why we might want to do that.

As a minimalist programmer, I avoid useless code, and that includes unnecessary labels. In the following paragraphs, I will list only the cases that require labels.

But first, a few ground rules.
- As with CL, a label name is followed by a colon when used to identify a statement.
…
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Guru: Use SQL To Replace Reports

Guru: Error Handling in SQL PL, Part 2

Guru: Error Handling in SQL PL, Part 1

Guru: SQL PL Labels

Content archive

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