Understanding how to enter DDS specifications into a source file and compile them into physical and logical files is really as far as you need to go for 90% of the tasks involved in running a 400. Yes, nowadays you see alot about using DDL (essentially SQL) to create tables but I am still a fan of DDS and do create views using SQL statements when it makes sense to do so.

Recently I have been working on a tier three ERP system from one of those conglomerated software consolidation companies. Chances are you have heard of them if you have been around ERP systems in the last few years. 

The one thing I really hate about this system (which uses a mainstream database on the backend running on a Win32 platform) is how clunky the report writing process is. It’s not elegent, and it’s not tightly integrated into the system itself. In short I think it sucks.

This is precisely an area where the AS/400, iSeries and System i shines. You have so many native tools and applications to work with the underlying database. You have tools like Query/400, Query Manager, direct SQL and so much more that simply plugs right in and goes. You don’t have to learn a bunch of complicated syntax to use programs like Query/400 either because its entirely menu driven.

Many people these days are frowning on “green-screen” based programs.

My take is always to use the right tool for the job and sometimes that is a query report or interactive lookup screen using runqry or query definition. The command line and perhaps a small CL program allows this to be transparent to the user, so who cares if the resulting data is displayed on an old fashioned green-screen.

So to get started writing reports check out the following short list of commands/programs:

WRKQRY
STRQMQRY
RUNQRY
Operations Navigator (allows you to execute and thoroughly examine SQL statements)

One area that used to be lacking on the AS400 was report manipulation or report mining tools. People used to print out thousands of pages of reports (and many still do) just to pull out a couple pages with the pertinent details and then throw the rest away.

But nowadays there are so many third party tools that will take your spool files and convert them into plain text for your PCs. Even Operations Navigator has had this capability for many years. It even allows you to search through files and outqs. End users can even do this with a little bit of training on Operations Navigator, it’s not that difficult and they will love you for it.

There really aren’t many excuses for getting the most out of your systems today. We aren’t living in the stone age where data extraction and reporting writing for the AS/400 is complicated thanks to the myraid of tools that have been available for many years now.

Sometimes when people transfer data from an AS/400 to Excel or another program they run into a some data that looks a bit like guacamole, this tends to happen when transferring numerical data.

Without getting into a lot of boring technical details “packed data fields” are the default standard for storing numerical data on AS/400s in a format known as EBCDIC. PC based computers use ASCII and so they don’t always translate across when transferred in there native formats.

The problem is when you bring that data over to the PC world it doesn’t always translate correctly to ASCII… now this only tends to occur when using the data transfer program built into Client Access and not when using an ODBC connection or other program which does the data translation for you behind the scenes.

The symptom is that when you download the data you will see letters in fields where there should be numbers from 0 through 9. To correct you simply translate these letters or characters over to the corresponding number as follows:

0 = ‘}’
1 = ‘J’
2 = ‘K’
3 = ‘L’
4 = ‘M’
5 = ‘N’
6 = ‘O’
7 = ‘P’
8 = ‘Q’
9 = ‘R’

Now thats about as easy as duck soup… but it sure can be a pain. Ultimately to “cure” this issue you will want to get at the data another way and not use the AS/400 Data Transfer portion of Client Access for this specific table, instead use ODBC and SQL query, import it as part of a printable report, etc.

Everyone wants to get there data into Excel or spreadsheet of choice to slice dice and do whatever else you need to in a user friendly, powerful program tailor made for data manipulation and reporting.

Getting data from your AS/400 to Excel used to be a major pain but now its simple and routine process depending on what your reporting needs are. Simply replicating a table or pulling in a printed report can be done but if you need more complex functions or selecting slices of data from a large table you will want to get some third party software which will make this process easy.

Without the use of expensive third party software there are essentially two ways to pull data from an AS/400 over into your Excel spreadsheets.

The first method utilizes the data connection wizard built into Excel and an ODBC driver to query the database tables. Yes, Excel has a feature built right into it for querying databases (not just your AS/400) and storing the resulting data sets in your spreadsheets!

The AS/400 and iSeries ODBC driver comes with Client Access and is available as an option when you install Client Access on your PC. Alternatively there are some other vendors out there that sell ODBC or OLE drivers for connecting to your AS/400.

Utilizing the AS/400 ODBC driver you then use the Excel Data Wizard to open a connection to your system and pull down data. Alternatively you can use an Access database and create linked tables (again utilizing the ODBC driver) and then query and report against them.

After using Excels data connection wizard (as shown above) you simply just import the AS/400 data into your desired spreadsheet page using the data import option which will then connect to your AS/400 ODBC data connection and pull down the data tables.

The default for this type of connection is to download the _entire_ database table… unless you want this there are some additional options you can use to add query constraints to pare down the data selection.

The second method is to take an existing spool file report, download it as a text file using iSeries Navigator and then importing it right into Excel. Excel handles this perfectly except you have to add in the column breaks and then cleanup the page headings.

When using the Excel Text Import wizard to import AS/400 data contained in spool files make sure you select fixed width and not delimited field data. The alignment of the columns may take a little adjusting.