RE: Sorting -- MIDRANGE-L

Zak,

You never said how many fields you need to sort on.  When you mentioned
Group1, I remembered a little sort tool I devised ages ago at a publishing
company that used G1.  It had a simple interface; three sort fields
described by their position in the record, and their respective lengths.  It
took about 15 minutes to write, and performance was OK given the simplicity
of the command.  Three sort fields is probably not enough for your
requirements, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

Eric DeLong
Sally Beauty Company
MIS-Project Manager (BSG)
940-898-7863 or ext. 1863



-----Original Message-----
From: Metz, Zak [mailto:Zak_Metz@xxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2003 8:31 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Sorting


Always true, Paul. However, in this case I am pretty clear on why we
have to do what we do.

My company (Group 1...www.g1.com) writes software for a variety of
things revolving around bulk mail. Our software will standardize
addresses by comparing them to the USPS database and correct them, then
perform presorting for maximum postal discounts. I'm sure some of you
use, or at least have heard of, our CODE-1 Plus and Mailstream Plus
products that do that. The interesting part about how things work around
here is that the products are all written in generic COBOL, then code is
built around that to make it all work on each platform. Therefore, my
requirements are fairly stringent. Something as seemingly simply as
allowing the COBOL to read an LF would require a major change at the
"base" code level that would need to be pulled into every product. Just
the necessary QA to make that happen is significant if PD can be
convinced that it's important.

So I've been looking for ways to improve pieces here and there that are
under the "platform's" control, the department that I am in. Sorting is
such an animal. As I mentioned at the outset, my requirement is to start
with a PF and end with a PF, be it the same or a new one. Also, since
the files are very large, it would be very desirable to be able to do
the work in a single PF.

The sorting is being done in preparation for processing by the next
COBOL base code program. Often this is a requirement such as sorting by
ZIP or ZIP and ZIP+4. If duplicates are being eliminated, the key can be
more complex, probably including the first couple letters of the street
name. And so you start to see that I really can't predict where
customers are going to have that data within their files or what fields
they're going to use. And these are just the simple examples. You can
imagine how long the key gets when you are presorting a multi-million
piece mailing.

As others have waxed poetic about before, this list is such a great
resource. Many of the suggestions offered were ones I had used in the
past but hadn't thought to apply to this. I mean, creating an index and
then RGZPFMing from it...that's clever. I like it. Many of the
suggestions would require a second file, though, and others are stymied
by the fact that this is a non-described file. I'll be digging, and I'll
let you all know what I finally use. Meanwhile, my wholehearted thanks!

Z

> -----Original Message-----
> From: PaulMmn
> "What they want or ask for isn't what they need."  Ask them "What 
> problem are you trying to solve," and you'll get a better idea what 
> they need.
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