Re: SQL Naming Conventions

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 11:31 AM, Buck Calabro <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2/29/2016 10:17 AM, Vernon Hamberg wrote:

Buck - I think he refers to the Navigator tool or maybe the one in ACS.

I've been using that for many years. I keep my SQL scripts on the IFS,
and opening a .SQL file with Windows File Explorer starts the ACS SQL
Script program. However, copying a column of column names into an RPG
program, to be used for say, a FETCH data structure, is kind of ugly.

Sorry for my ignorance, but how is it ugly? (I don't use these things
myself.) Is it that you've got "ragged commas" or other such obstacles
which prevent clean rectangular cut-and-paste?

Since this is the RPG list, I was sort of hoping that Mike had a tool
that would maybe generate such an RPG structure for him. And me :-) Or
a tool to do any of the things that an RPG programmer would like to do
with a list of column names...

All of this strikes me as scripting's bread and butter. Should be
quite easy in any vaguely competent scripting language (I know you've
got at least Python and AutoHotkey, plus whatever comes with Windows,
such as VBScript). Unless I'm misunderstanding. What do you consider
the trickiest part(s)?

For some things which you are currently accomplishing (at least in
part) via your own SQL scripts, I would think you could add some ugly
contortions to your SQL[1] to force the output to adhere to the
formatting you need for copying and pasting. (Not ideal, but doesn't
introduce another technology, if that's a consideration.)

John Y.


[1] For issues with ragged commas and such, I'm thinking along the
lines of liberal use of the SPACE function in combination with LEFT or
RIGHT as needed.