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Specific usage

This Document provides a more in depth tutorial and demo for using the Continue VSCode extension with Db2 for i.

Getting Started: Continue

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Continue is the leading open source AI code assistant for VS Code. It provides a wide range of AI features:

  • Chat Interface
  • Code Completion
  • Autocomplete

Install the Continue extension for VS Code

  1. Install the Continue extension from the VS Code Marketplace. alt text
  2. Once Installed, there will be a new icon in your VS Code menu (mine is on the top right). Click on the icon to open the chat window. alt text

Once you have the extension installed, you can configure the AI provider you want to use. Continue supports multiple AI providers (including Watsonx!). You can choose the provider you want to use by clicking on the settings icon in the chat window.

For demonstration purposes, we will use the Ollama Provider for hosting LLMs locally on your machine.

Setting up Ollama Provider

Here is a step-by-step guide to setting up the Ollama provider with the IBM Granite models in Continue:

1. Install Ollama

Install Ollama on your machine by following the link below:

Install Ollama

2. Fetch the IBM Granite 3.0 models

The IBM Granite 3.0 models are available in the Ollama model registry. More information about the IBM Granite models can be found here.

Using the Ollama CLI, fetch the IBM Granite 3.0 8b model by running the following command:

Terminal window
ollama pull granite3-dense:8b

3. Configure the Ollama provider in Continue

Open the VSCode Command Palette (Press ctrl+shift+p) and search for Continue: open config.json. This will open the Continue central config file $HOME/.continue/config.json in your editor. To enable the Granite models in Ollama, add the following configuration to the models section:

~/.continue/config.json
"models": [
   {
     "title": "Granite Code 8b",
     "provider": "ollama",
     "model": "granite3-dense:8b"
   }
 ],

save this file and select the Granite model in the chat window.

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Other LLM Providers

You can also use other LLM providers with Continue. Here are some of the available providers:

  • Watsonx
  • Anthropic
  • OpenAI
  • Gemini (Google)

Examples

Once you have the extension installed and the AI provider configured, you can ask questions about your database using the chat window using the @db2i context provider. In Continue, a context provider is very similar to a chat participant in GitHub Copilot. It provides additional context to the AI model to help it generate more accurate SQL queries.

More on context providers can be found here.

Working with Tables

Example 1: Summarize the columns in the EMPLOYEE table

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Notes:

  • The AI model recognizes the table reference EMPLOYEE and provides a summary of the columns in the table.
  • Primary Key and Constraint information is also provided.

Example 2: Join the EMPLOYEE and DEPARTMENT tables

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Notes:

  • The AI model recognizes the table references EMPLOYEE and DEPARTMENT and provides a SQL query that joins the two tables.
  • The SQL query is generated based on the context provided by the @db2i context provider.
  • The generated SQL query can be copied and run in the SQL editor in VS Code.

Example 3: More complex queries

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Notes:

  • The AI model recognizes the table references EMPLOYEE and DEPARTMENT and provides a SQL query that calculates the total, average, and median salary for each department.
  • run the generated SQL query in the SQL editor in VS Code.

We can refine this query further by asking to remove departments that dont have any employees: alt text

Tables context provider:

When you connect to a system and start an SQL Job, we automatically create a default schema contex provider with the tables in that schema. This allows you to ask questions about the tables in the schema without having to reference the schema in your queries.

My defult Library is SAMPLE, so @Db2i-SAMPLE is the context provider for the tables in the SAMPLE library: alt text

Once you select @Db2i-SAMPLE, the tables appear in a dopdown list. You can select a table to get a summary of the columns in that table: alt text

Example Prompt: alt text

Note, you do not need to invoke @Db2i in order to use the table context items. One advantage to “tagging” the direct table, is that we only look up information for that table, and dont search the entire library list for the table.

You can add additional table context providers by editing your library list in the SQL Job Manager.

  1. Open the SQL Job Manager
  2. Select New SQL Job, or edit the current Job
  3. Add the library as the first entry in the library list
  4. Save the Job

In the following image, I added TOYSTORE3 to the library list, and now I can use the @Db2i-TOYSTORE3 context provider to get information about the tables in the TOYSTORE3 library: alt text alt text

Working with other references in your Library List

Example 1: Reference a function in QSYS2

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Notes:

  • The model recognizes the function reference OBJECT_STATISTICS in the QSYS2 library and provides a summary of the function.
  • Information about the TOYSTORE3 library is also provided.
  • An example of how to use OBJECT_STATISTICS is provided.