RE: SQL... MAX AND COUNT?

Well if your dealing with a single huge, nasty SQL statement I'd agree
with you.

But if you've got a complex statement made up of multiple CTE and UDFs
its pretty easy to see intermediate results.

Of course the same could be said of RPG using sub procedures.

Charles Wilt
--
iSeries Systems Administrator / Developer
Mitsubishi Electric Automotive America
ph: 513-573-4343
fax: 513-398-1121
  

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces+cwilt=meaa.mea.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces+cwilt=meaa.mea.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 3:58 PM
To: 'RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: RE: SQL... MAX AND COUNT?

From: Wilt, Charles

And yes, I'd agree that it's easy to create a SQL statement 

that looks

right but isn't.  On the other hand, IMHO when an SQL statement is
wrong, it's usually obvious from the results; and the way 

the results

wrong are usually help clue you in on why the statement is 

wrong.  On

the other hand, an error in RPG logic is usually harder to 

track down

since you are dealing on a per-record basis instead of an 

entire set.

Hmm.  To me, it's actually much easier to debug the RPG, 
especially on very
complex SQL statements, because I can much more easily review 
intermediate
steps, whereas with SQL I can only make my analysis based on the final
result (which might in turn require dumping the results to an 
output file
and then poring through that to determine what went wrong).

I can of course break down the SQL and do it piece by piece, 
but unlike RPG,
as we've seen it's pretty easy for something in one part of 
an SQL to break
something in another part, and that's hard to debug when you 
can't actually
get in the middle of the process.

Joe


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