RE: Letting the User Select Level Breaks?

Clare, glad to liven things up there in the great white north!  It must be
tough on our northern neighbors when 3 of the 4 teams in the NHL playoffs
now are from the states. <g>  GO RED WINGS!  (and our natural hat trick
wonder, Darren McCarty!)

You are right, it is indeed a rare business case where one would need more
than 9 levels of level breaks.  But I've seen it happen.

Anyway, your subject said it all.  I have already mentioned JDEdwards S002
subroutine twice previously in the "primary vs. full-proc" thread.  I have a
cumulative 3 - 4 years experience with the green screen JDEdwards (I've been
out of the JDE world for a few years now), which uses the scenario you
describe, letting users specify any number of sorting, level breaks, and
record selection for a given program.

IIRC, JDE "World" uses something called DreamWriter, which is a user
interface for creating the OPNQRYF specs for sort and selection.  It also
provides the user interface for specifying level breaks.  The level break
information is used by the S002 routine to parse data from the record, by
level break-ordered fields, into a string array.  It compares that string to
the previous record's string and, depending on where a difference occurs in
the string, sets in motion the appropriate level break routine.  Neat stuff.
If I did enough level break programming where users needed that kind of
flexibility in a non-JDE shop, I'd consider re-inventing that wheel myself.

Regarding user knowledge of level breaks, I've seen both ends of the
spectrum.  One JDE shop I worked in trained their users, and the were great
at using DreamWriters.  Another shop did not train their users, and the IT
staff had to create all the DreamWriters themselves.  In your example, you
mention 8 levels.  There are much more than 64 possibilities; you have to
use the factorial 8! (i.e., 8x7x6x5x4x3x2 = 40,320) possibilities.
Obviously, most of these possibilities are meaningless.  For example,
Company, Division, & Branch likely would always be in that order, and would
always be the first three level breaks.

- Dan Bale
(I am *NOT* "Dale"
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200105/msg00281.html )
SAMSA, Inc.
989-790-0507
DBale@SAMSA.com <mailto:DBale@SAMSA.com>
  Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur.
  (Whatever is said in Latin seems profound.)