System Cross Reference

["Dave Odom" <Dave.Odom@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jerry,

As far as I know, the "SYS..." tables were created by IBM for their
regular DB2 RDBMs.  It first started in SQL/DS, now DB2 for VM and VSE. 
In IBMs regular DB2s (MVS, VM, VSE, Unix-flavors, Windows), they are the
only and common way to look up info on any DB2 table and its associated
objects.   

The architecture was picked up by other RDBMs.  So, if you ever have an
opportunity to work on a regular common RDBMS (standard DB2s, ORACLE,
etc.),  those are the tables that will become your "dictionary" and very
important.  

Hopefully as IBM encourages more of its DB2/400 folks to move toward
using only DB2-thinking and implementing, using the "SYS..." tables will
become common.   I've built some QM queries over the tables to help me. 
For what its worth, I can share.  You can also access them via ISQL if
you want to do it the "raw" way.

Take care,

Dave Odom
Arizona