Working with SQL

Edit online

Use the IBM® Z Database Assistant SQL editor to write, execute, and format SQL statements.

About this task

The SQL editor provides an environment for working with SQL statements including syntax highlighting, auto-validation, auto-completion, formatting, and exporting. You can work with multiple query editor tabs simultaneously, and you can easily run either a collection of queries or individual queries.

Tip: Ask the Assistant about SQL statements and how to enter them.

Procedure

To edit and run SQL:

  1. From the side navigation panel, select the IMS system that you want to work with and click the SQL editor tab.
    An empty query editor tab opens, which is titled query1.sql by default. You can open additional editor tabs by clicking the plus sign (+) to the right of the current editor tab.
  2. Position your cursor in the query editor page and enter an SQL statement.
    As you write a statement, you can use the following productivity features:
    • Use undo and redo to remove and re-add changes to a statement.
    • Format the SQL to restructure a statement into a format that is easier to parse.
    • Select a different PSB. The new PSB becomes the default for that query editor page. The default PSB for each query is DFSCP000.
    • Highlight a section of SQL and copy the SQL to the clipboard.
  3. When you are ready to run the SQL, click Run all to run all of the statements in the active query editor pane.
    If you've created multiple SQL statements in the same query editor tab, you can run a subset of those statements by highlighting them and clicking Run selected from the Action menu.

    The query runs and the results are displayed in the query result tab below the editor. The query is also added to the Recent queries side pane, where it can be inserted into the query editor pane by clicking it. The query history persists for the duration of the current login session.

  4. In the Query column of the Query result pane, click an SQL statement to display more details and results.
    The Results tab displays the data that is returned by the statement. This tab provides a search facility for locating specific values and an export facility for saving the results as a CSV file.
  5. Optional: To export the query to a CSV file, click the Results tab and click the Export icon in the upper right of the Results pane.