Another Easter holiday came and went, leaving behind great memories and pictures of family, friends and festivities. Of all of the day’s activities, the most fun, of course, has always been the Easter Egg Hunt. When my girls were just little things, I’d dress them all up and get them fired up for the neighborhood event. They’d rush around the yard with all of the other kids, grabbing the eggs that were in full view. Meanwhile, if they would’ve glanced down under the bush just in front of them, they could’ve seen a bunch of hidden eggs nestled right under their feet. Of course, they only saw these gems after all the searching had come to a halt and only then, when I had pointed them out directly!
It seems this also happens with some of the many features of DBU! Our customers jump right in and see the most obvious features offered by our database utility: edit the record, display logical files, position to this RRN, search for a specific value, display multiple records all at once, etc. Rush in and out, get the job done with DBU and go on your merry way. Yes, that is one of the brightest beauties of DBU. But what about some of the ‘hidden jewels’ offered within the database utility? Seriously, they are sitting right there at your fingertips, waiting to be utilized. Here goes a list of just a few of these gems:
Access ANY record on your network.
“What? You can access files on systems other than IBM i?”, you ask in amazement. You bet! With DBU 10.0, remote access was added as part of the basic functionality of DBU. When DBU is installed, remote
systems can be configured and managed for access. You can then ‘DBU’ the files that the “Unix guys” are working with as it resides on the OTHER box sitting in the corner. Soon, both the AS/400 and Unix developers will be singing “kumbaya” in unison. (Listen close, as that doesn’t happen very often!)
Reactivate deleted records and be the hero of your department.
Oftentimes, a record is deleted in error…..or even multiple records. Did you know you can DBU the file and display deleted records, then reactivate them? There is even a flag to ‘include deleted records’ in
search criteria. Records can individually be reactivated using DBU. And if you have large amounts of records to reactivate, we also have another utility in our toolset to reactivate records en masse. it’s called RDR – Reactivate Delete Records, pretty intuitive!
Learn SQL while you use DBU!
DBU offers powerful search options for your files. It allows filtering and scanning records based on the SQL ‘where’ clause in addition to the more familiar DBU ‘Define Search’ function. Newbies to SQL can define the search then toggle to view how the same function is performed via an SQL statement.
Another helpful feature for SQL developers is the ability to display a table or files associated “alias” names (ie. long names) by pressing F18=Col Head/Alias key on the DBU Field Selection selection screen. This capability is also available from the DBUFLD command.
Create graphical database applications.
Sometimes the IBM i is thought of as only a ‘green screen’ box. Not anymore! If you want to impress other departments with a quick and easy new interface, why not create a little DBU database application to be presented in graphical format? Now you can! Just utilitze DBU to create the app with the traditional ‘green screen’ interface, install DBU GUI on the users PC, pull up the DBU app via DBU GUI and save it as an icon for the user to access over & over again!
These are just a few of the hidden gems waiting for you, if you’d only delve a bit deeper into DBU. The more you work with DBU, the more you will get out of it. And there’s even more features! I didn’t even hit on more SQL options, monitoring and auditing features. Bright, beautiful gems just waiting to be uncovered by you!