As the old adage says, old habits die hard. I have experienced this firsthand since returning to the IBM i world a couple of months ago. While I was off working on Watson, IBM reached into its marketing bag of tricks and “changed” the name of its relational database product from DB2 to Db2. If I had a nickel for every time that I’ve typed DB2 instead of Db2 since my return, I could use that money to take my wife out for a really nice meal; that assumes restaurants being open here in Minnesota, but I digress…
Another old habit that I’ve seen still being used in the IBM i world is copying data into QTEMP and then running SQL against this temporary copy. There are certain aspects of this QTEMP approach that are beneficial, but there’s a real dark side, to use a Star Wars analogy, from a performance perspective that should be not ignored. I’ve written this article to highlight the reasons why IBM i developers should consider ending their QTEMP habit.
The good news is that SQL has several different features that allow you to get the benefits of the QTEMP approach without the performance overhead. If you or your team need any help with a New Year’s resolution in 2021 to break the QTEMP habit with advanced SQL, then let me know.
Have a Merry Christmas and wonderful holiday season, I look forward to talking with all of you in 2021!
