Using IBM i? Need to create Excel, CSV, HTML, JSON, PDF, SPOOL reports? Learn more about the fastest and least expensive tool for the job: SQL iQuery.
I'm wondering if anyone is using WebQuery and how the setup of that licensed program went?
I'm hearing not good things about the initial setup and have a client who may need it, so I'd like to hear your experience with the product.
We currently have our own internal tool that accepts SQL SELECT statements and automatically routes the results to the Web, wrapped in HTML tags. But if there were a more robust solution (our tool is the equvalent to Interactive SQL but web-based) I'd probably want to go with that.
Thanks.
I called our IBM business partner to ask about it about a year ago and he struggled to find even one of his customers that was using it. It sounded to me that it might be good for us, but he also had heard that it was a pain to set up. But again, when he went to check with other customers about that, he couldn't find any.
So let us know what you find out! :-)
Version 1.1 was a bear to install, and if you didn't hold your fingers crossed in just the right way, well...
However on our new box, I started fresh with version 1.2 and honestly it went on extremely fast, no problems at all, and I was turning out stuff in no time flat.
It is a very neat tool. And I will be honest, I dreaded putting it on the new box because I remember all the hassle I had with 1.1 and all the loops you had to jump through, etc. to make it work. 1.2 worked just fine.
chris
clbirk,
What kinds of things are you able to do with it?
What was the cost?
cost I can't answer because it came forward from previous i box and it was configured differently than it is now.
I can create "reports" that I can get in excel, pdf or on the screen for example, I can have a drop down so they can select what they want, the select drop down can be dynamic in that it is built with the data from within, I can go and do filtering of the data, I can do graphs (bar, pie), etc.
There are a few different features within webquery, some that allow you to do olap and other offline stuff.
I took on the old version a gene cobb webquery class that common offered that was "online" (you logged into ibm and you were "trained", then you played with your copy), similar to the ones that they offer at common.
It has alot of power, it is fast and one day the executive staff was meeting on an issue to which I had a database of the information, and I had created several canned "reports" and graphs but they said, what if we exclude this or what if we only look at certain years, etc. and a few mouse clicks and a few keystrokes and voila, they had what they were after.
Honestly, it would behoove anyone thinking about it, to download it and take the 70 day trial of it, and if you are a common member consider taking one of their all day remote classes on it or see it in action at common.
It of course uses sqe, not cqe, so it is faster than old query/400.
And if you know what you are doing, you can create dashboards by taking elements from it and slapping them on a webpage as I seen done (but haven't done myself).
It has depending on the features you get, drill-ability, so that you can drill down to see what makes it up. Over at the ibm site, there is like an 18 minute video that is on webquery and some things you can do. That is version 1.1, (or it was last time I checked), but new version is even slicker.
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/i/db2/webquery/index.html
under solutions there is a hyperlink for seeing some of the demo's.
c