Native OS400 Physical and Logical Files VS. DB2

Many of you will recall my recent post about reindexing on the AS400. My reindex using the R98404 was mostly successful. However, in reviewing the messages I received in the jde.log, we realized that my tables are in native OS400 format (used for World) rather than DB2/SQL.

In other words, it looks as if we are coexistent eventhough we are not. This is likely due to the fact that we originally installed World (for Real Estate) and expected to be coexistent, but at the last minute, the Real Estate Module for XE became available, our system was upgraded, and we went live without coexistence.

So my questions are:
1) Can someone please explain the main differences between native OS400 files and DB2. As I currently understand it, all of my tables are much like text files and rely on indexes (or logicals) to maintain integrity.
2) Is there a way to upgrade from native OS400 to DB2?
3) Are there specific benefits to making this change?
4) Since coexistence is not supported after XE, will ERP 8 or 9 be able to read native OS400 tables?

Thanks in advance! I am still trying to get this AS400 thing under control....

Ryan Hunt

Ryan,

To the best of my knowledge there is no functional difference between OS/400 indexes and SQL indexes AFTER they are created. The SQL indexes allow you to do some nice things that are not available in DDS but I don't believe that any of these are used by JDE. The one thing that SQL does that is very nice is to create EVI (Encoded Vecor Indexes), I know JDE does not take advantage of this functionality. Once the indexes are created you should delete your *SQLPKG objjects, except those starting with 'Q'. The SQL/QUERY optimizer will then figure out the best way to get at the data, IMHO the AS/400 optimizer is by far the best on the market.

Hope this helps.

Tom Davidson