iAD 10-22-2008 Text 1 T.L. Ashford is “The Labeling Answer”® for the System i. Ashford's Barcode400 has been the dependable choice for the industry since 1983. With Barcode400's newly enhanced Graphic Designer no “green screen” interaction is needed for label design. New features include: AFP/HP-compatible printing, easy-to-use graphics import tool, test print to desktop printer, simple font download tool, updated drivers and format listing reports. Even compliance labeling is made easy with design templates. Call 800-541-4893 to order a FREE DEMO CD or visit us at T.L. Ashford & Associates. Read More >>
Getting the most benefit out DB2 for i requires keeping the concept of "set at time" in mind and making use of all the latest features and functions.
By Mike Cain
In Dan Cruikshank's August 2008 article "Working with Data Sets," Dan illuminated the power of SQL "set at a time" processing, and he used some of the new DB2 for i 6.1 OLAP functions to do it. In this article, I'll expand on this concept and demonstrate some additional uses for OLAP functions, as well as reiterate the reasons that SQL can be so powerful for the data-centric programmer. We'll also take a look at some of the performance considerations for more-complex SQL requests.
Why are the examples for SQL always so lame? It's time to see what you can do with SQL on a real-world database.
By Joe Pluta
Seriously, how often do you change the price in an entire price file by 15 percent? I don't know of a single situation in my career where that has happened. Yet that's the same lame example we see in every "SQL for business" book. Yes, SQL is great for handling sets of data, but more often than not, in the real world you have to do some analysis, some aggregation, some extraction, and then finally some manipulation. The good news is that SQL gives you lots of tools to do just that. The better news is that this article will show you some practical examples on how to use those tools.
By Joe Pluta