Re: Non-unique keys

With all due respect... there's a VERY VERY big difference between "records will come in RRN sequence" and "records are GUARANTEED to come in RRN sequence".

Right now your records will indeed come in RRN sequence. But they are not guaranteed to do so. It's possible that your program will break with a PTF or OS upgrade or something like that, if IBM should decide to change the way it works.

This is a poor design. If you want the records to always come in FIFO sequence, then create the file with the FIFO keyword.


James H. H. Lampert wrote:

I just ran a test program, to detect any cases in which non-ascending RRNs would be read within a key; it found none. Although it used The Cycle, rather than a CHAIN followed by a READE loop, I think it's reasonable to expect the same results on the latter as the former.