RE: Better way to code a maintenence program ILERPG

[Colin Williams <Williamsc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

You mean you failed a technical interview because you were honest! 

-----Original Message-----
From: Joel Fritz [mailto:JFritz@sharperimage.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 1999 1:37 AM
To: 'MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com'
Subject: RE: Better way to code a maintenence program ILERPG


I guess it's a matter of taste, but I would never recommend DFU for
anything
but something that's needed in less than an hour and will never be used
for
more than a minute or two at a time.  The sad thing is, on a green
screen,
there isn't anything any better than the IBM subfile with option fields.
PDM is as good a model as any.

Any time you write a file maintenance program you have to consider data
integrity, sorting, and what the end users need.  

I once failed a technical interview because I said that it would take me
anywhere from 2 hours to 2 days to write a single file maintenance
program
that did updates, deletes, and inserts depending on the specific
requirements.  I think I should have said 2 hours.

###########################################
The above is my personal opinion and is not intended to represent good
programming practice or the product of a sound mind.

Joel Fritz        

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Bale [mailto:dbale@genfast.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 1999 2:34 PM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Better way to code a maintenence program ILERPG




>>I am just trying to write a  maintenence program for a data file which
has
only two fields.  I just want to know the better way of desiging that.
The
user
said they dont want a main screen like to select an option 1, 2, 3, etc
to
avoid
back and forth.

So, I thought of designing subfile like the one at the bottom, which
displays
the existing rec<<

Have you considered creating a DFU application to do this?  If you have
no
editing to perform (which looks like the case here), you could save
yourself
a
bundle of time; it might take 15 minutes to set up.  If you have DBU on
your
system, it gets even easier.

If you decide to write your own program from scratch in the manner you
have
described, you need a way to keep track of the key fields' value, if you
allow
them to be changed.  If you read a record with a key value of 'A', the
user
changes it to 'B', you need a way to get back to record with key value
of
'A' to
change it to 'B'.  Usually, this would be accomplished by storing the
original
key value in a "hidden" subfile field.

Do you need to guard against duplicate keys being entered?  Many more
considerations are required to handle that.





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