RE: sql exec speed. was AS/400 STILL wearing the undeserved "closed system" moniker

My point was more about changing prices than about SQL and record-based
processing.  I rather enjoyed the "makes me ill" comment.  I think you're
right that the example dumbs down the business process, though not for the
same reasons you noted.  You suggested that price changes would be less
global and less frequent.  For me it's a true business need, however, it's
more about the amount of processing that really goes into changing a price.

At the time that you're changing a price you may need an audit table of
"from price" and "to price" for every record changed.  There's a net change
to the value of inventory that has to be applied to stock ledger and general
ledger.  You may need to create POS price change transactions or price
ticketing files.  I was trying to figure out if it would be possible to
capture all of this in a job stream and use the example SQL as one of the
last steps.  It seems like the SQL statement that just performs a percentage
markup or markdown would make it impossible to perform the other steps.

As I watch folks in the Oracle world try to code some of these processes I
see some ugly, ugly code involving buffers and/or cursors.  I'd love to see
how a good database design and truly skilled SQL developers would code such
a business process.

-Jim

James Damato
Manager - Technical Administration
Dollar General Corporation
<mailto:jdamato@dollargeneral.com>