Re: can SQL Server files be stored in IFS

Jim Franz wrote:

I've been asked if MS SQL Server files can live in the IFS
(so the my RPGLE programs that currently write Excel format data could write to the SQL server files in the IFS).

What do you mean by "live in the IFS"? Do you mean you want to store your SQL Server databases in the root file system of your IFS?

(Technically, the IFS includes everything, including your i5/OS libraries, and including all of the Windows systems accessible via windows networking -- but I assume that's not what you mean, I assume you mean the root file system.)

I guess that would depend on whether Microsoft lets you specify a network drive for SQL Server -- which is over my head, since I'm not a Microsoft guy. I use DB2 on i5/OS for my databases.

However -- even if you can store them in the IFS, that would not enable your RPG programs to use them!! Just because you can write Excel data now doesn't mean you'll also be able to write SQL Server data.

Sure, you'd have access to the raw bytes that make up the file -- but in order to properly access the files, you'd need to know exactly what all of the bytes mean, and how their organized, and how to do all of the necessary calculations to read records by key, and so forth. Basically, you'd have to re-write the SQL Server software in RPG -- or at least a big part of it -- and that would not be a trivial task.

You can use JDBC drivers from your RPG programs, however. You could use them to access the SQL Server database over the network, and then the files could continue to reside on Windows and use the existing SQL Server software from Microsoft.

If you're interested in that, I've written some articles about using JDBC from RPG. Let me know, I'll post the links.