i View

Structured Query Language (SQL) and
Query/Reporting Software—
A Marriage of Convenience

Posted on May 7, 2018 by Bill Langston

Through the years, IBM has steadily enhanced Structure Query Language (SQL) for the IBM i environment and encouraged software developers to use SQL to define and manipulate their Db2 on i database.

The NGS-IQ query, reporting, and OLAP software is designed to enable people to extract, manipulate, format, analyze, and share reports and files without writing scripts and programs. But as more IBM i programmers become comfortable writing SQL scripts, some of them have said they like writing queries in SQL, rather than through a menu-driven application interface. Thanks to the flexibility of NGS-IQ, this is definitely a viable option.

The NGS-IQ query process includes three program exits that you can use to supplement our native functions with custom routines that tackle complex and unique requirements. The first exit is for a job that you want to run immediately before the query. The last exit is for a job that you want to run immediately after the query. The third exit is for a job that returns the value you want assigned to a new field in the query.

If you like using SQL, consider having your script perform the query logic and then generate a Db2 on i table. You can use NGS-IQ’s first exit to process that request so that you and other users can take advantage of NGS-IQ’s wide range of prompting, formatting, and output features. It’s a terrific marriage of convenience.

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