QMF vs. SPUFI

As regular readers of my blog know, I sometimes use the blog to answer questions I get via e-mail. This is one of those times...

The question I received is this:
Can you bring out the major differences between QMF and SPUFI?

Here is my response:
The biggest difference between QMF and SPUFI is that QMF is a query/reporting environment with the ability to format reports. SPUFI is just a quick and dirty SQL execution engine.

(Here is a trivia question: what does the acronym SPUFI stand for? The answer is provided at the bottom, so page down if you want to know...)

If you need to produce nice-looking reports, enable user input to a query, or store your queries and reports for future usage, QMF is a much better technology for doing so. QMF also offers data formatting and translation capabilities that are difficult (sometimes impossible) to accomplish using SPUFI and SQL alone.

A typical end-user might have difficulty using SPUFI because it requires using data sets to store your SQL statements and pass them to DB2. The results are also delivered to another data set. Most end users are not comfortable managing and manipulating mainframe data sets. QMF, on the other hand, stores its queries in tables and hides this fact from the user with a nice interface for saving and recalling SQL queries (and results).

Keep in mind, though, that SPUFI comes for free with DB2 whereas QMF is an add-on product and costs money. Not every DB2 customer will have QMF, whereas every DB2 (mainframe) customer will have SPUFI.



OK, now, what does SPUFI stand for?

The answer: SQL Processor Using File Input.