Reader Feedback and Insights: Indicators in RPG II Programs

November 15, 2002 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Hey, Ted:

Just a comment on your good ideas (which were published in the article, “Help with RPG II Programs,” in the November 1 issue of Midrange Guru) for making System/36 style code easier to use.

I have gotten in the habit of using the DO op code to group calculations that have the same conditioning indicators .

For example, consider a group of calculations conditioned by indicator 25:

          CHAIN                        25
N25       MOVE
N25       Z-ADD
N25       etc.......

I would group them like this:

          CHAIN                        25
N25       DO
          MOVE
          Z-ADD
          etc.......
          END

It saves me from loading “fieldicators”

Access the Database from Qshell

November 15, 2002 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Hey, Ted:

Qshell does a good job when it comes to accessing data in source physical file members and IFS files, but I need to access a database file from a Qshell script. Is that possible?

— Mike

IBM provides an undocumented utility called db2 that can execute SQL commands against the database.

It’s one of those “use it at your own risk” things.

The following command displays all the records from the COMPANIES file in library mylib.

db2 "select * from mylib.companies"

Qshell responds with this output.

COMPANY  COMPNAME
-------- -------------------------
   1     Leroy's Livery Stable
   2     Pete's Pet Shoppe