SQL type variables in RPG

I have written about defining RPG variables defined as SQL types in past posts, which made me curious about all there are. Having searched in IBM's Knowledge Center I was disappointed to find that there was no one page with all of this information upon. Which gave me idea to write this, a list of all SQL types available.

If I am defining variables as SQL types my source needs to be compiled as a SQLRPGLE, as the RPG SQL precompiler converts these SQL data types into more familiar RPG equivalents.

The syntax for these variable definitions is simple, it is just:

Closing all the files with one operation in RPG

There are times I stumble across things in the IBM manuals I felt I should have known. One of these is the ability to close all the files in a program with just one close statement. I have no idea how old this ability is, but it is relevant if you are programming your RPG in a modern manner.

Before main procedures were introduced to the RPG world, our programs were simple. We defined our files, and knew that they would close when the program ended.

01 **free 02 ctl-opt option(*nodebugio:*srcstmt:*nounref) ; 03 dcl-f PFILE1 ; 04 dcl-f DSPFILE workstn ; 05 dcl-f PRTFILE printer ; 06 *inlr = *on ;

Getting data for my auditors is simple using SQL

It is that time of the year when the auditors start asking me for system information about the IBM i I am responsible for. The reports they want from me today are:

1. Users who have not signed onto the IBM i for over a year.
2. Users who have a user profile, but have never signed onto the IBM i.

It is also a good opportunity to show how some of the things I have written about in the past come together to make my job a lot easier.

A colleague, who is responsible for a different IBM i partition, asked me if there was an easy way to get this information?

Get a specific number row using SQL

This is going to be a quickie. I was asked:

How can I get the 98th record from a file using SQL?

Fortunately this very simple, but first let me go through setting up my example.

I created a Db2 for i table to use in this example. I could have used a DDS file just as well. But this gives me an excuse to use one of what I consider one of the cool features of Db2 for i tables, identity columns.

If I am using a table with an identity column I don't have to increment some value in a field to keep a unique field in a file or table. The value for an identity columns are auto generated by Db2 for i, so all I have to do is just define them in my table. My example table just contains an identity column.

IBM i 7.3 TR5 and 7.2 TR9 now released

Today is an exciting day as the latest Technical Refreshes for the currently supported releases of the IBM i are available to download as PTFs:

• IBM i 7.3 TR5
• IBM i 7.2 TR9

I am not going to repeat what these TRs include, I am going to give you a]the link to the post I wrote when they were announced in August, see IBM i 7.3 TR5 and 7.2 TR9 announced.

The PTFs you will need to download and apply to install the new TR on your IBM i are:

Generic program to use SQL count for any file

The germ for this post came from a question I found in an IBM i Facebook group. How could this person write a program where he would pass the name of any file to SQL and get a count of records in that file. I gave my answer to that question, but the more I pondered I came up with what I consider to be a better solution. Which is what I am going to describe in this post.

I have written about creating and executing SQL statements contained in program variables before, and this just builds upon that.

Fortunately the SQL syntax to count the number of records is the same no matter what file or table I use:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM some_table WHERE some_column(s) = some_value(s)

Using SQL to determine how many records end with...

I was asked an intriguing question that I thought it would make a good post for this blog:

Using SQL, how would I get a count of all records in a file where the value in an alphanumeric field ends with 18?

Rather than show just the finished SQL statement I am going to show how, and why, I built each part of the select statement.

Let me start with my test file. It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that it is called TESTFILE, and is in the library QTEMP. The file contains one alphanumeric/character field, CHARFIELD, its length is irrelevant. Its contents looks like: