Re: Query/400

> Does anyone know if it's possible for Query/400 to do calculations on
>  it's own calculated totals (i.e. calculate margin % from it's running
>  totals)...and print them???

Yes, however there are some gotchas when working with calculated totals.

First off, in the calculation section you can create new fields that are
calculated from prior fields, or date stuff based on current day you running
the thing, or constants ... we use some like '---------- >' (arrow head) to
indicate that perhaps some field should be changed to some other value by our
personnel, or which is the before & which is the after of some cost or other
value change.  These new fields can also be calculated from other new fields
that you defined earlier.

Any of the selected fields can be totalled, sorted on, etc.
In the column sizing you can make a field zero wide if you want to sort on it
but not print it.

However if you select on a calculated field in which divide by zero is
possible, even if you also select on the divide by field to exclude the
zeros, the query will bomb ... in those cases I add some tiny fraction to the
divide by for safety.

If you have a calculated field like a percentage & you try to average it ...
at total time you do not get average percentage for all the data but average
of adding up the percentage column & dividing by the number of lines, which
might not be considered by some people to be a true percentage & in fact
certainly not agree with percentages I do in RPG where I calculate total line
from data on total line.

I use query output to intermediate work files for several reasons.
1. I want to do calculations based on the totals of columns.
2. When combining multiple files, sometimes I get extra lines on reports.
3. This is an easier way to combine sub-sets of the same file.

Recently I was lurking on Yahoo AS/400 clubs & posted some replies to
Query/400 questions at http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/as400support ... you
might find some additional insight there.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)