Q/400 to Web Query

All,

Here's some interesting items.

(1) The marketing of Web Query ("WQ") says you can import existing Q/400
queries to Web Query. That's technically true, but it's not 'the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth" so to speak.

WQ, during design, accesses files via metadata, not by actually looking at
the database. Before you can query a file, you must create the metadata for
that file. WQ then uses the metadata when designing the
report/graph/whatever. Fair enough.

When you import a Q/400 query (and I do mean 'import', not 'convert') you
have available only what fields were actually used in the Q/400 query, not
all fields in the file. You cannot add any additional fields from any of
the files named in the original Q/400 query. WQ sees only the imported
metadata of the Q/400 query. Essentially, the imported query becomes a file
to WQ.

(2) Another difference in WQ vs Q/400: Once a query has been designed, you
can't change the file used. In Q/400 if you had 2 (or more) files with the
same record format, you could change the file name and it would still run
fine. Not with WQ. There is no way to do that. If you're careful about
how you load metadata, you _can_ get WQ to use the library list at runtime.
Or you go direct to the metadata and start changing. I have a DCR open with
IBM to allow the file to be named at runtime.

Caveat emptor.