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Dan, comments in line. Regards, Carel Teijgeler *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 23-7-04 at 14:37 Dan Bale wrote: >> -----Original Message----- >I've never been a fan of the AS/400's implementation of FRFs. > > * You make a change to a field, or add one, in the FRF source, compile that, > then compile the database file. > > * Try finding an appropriate field to reference in an FRF. > > * Limits on record length mean that FRF's usually take more than one file to > accomplish. > >It just seems real kludgy to use. It depends. How many fields that should contain date or price values do you have in your database? I would only define one field each, DATE and PRICE, in the FRF and in the DDS source for each file I would reference to those fields in the FRF, not define derived fields in the FRF itself. I think it is more a design matter. (see for instance C. Massoglia, Database DDS, midrange Computing publication 1994). >I would like to see FRFs utilized where a data file for storing FRF info is >defined, i.e.: > A R FRF@ > A FRFFIELD 10 > A FRFLENGTH 5 0 > A FRFDTATYPE 1 > A FRFDECPOS 2 0 > A FRFTEXT 50 > A FRFCOLUMN1 20 > A FRFCOLUMN2 20 > A FRFCOLUMN3 20 > A FRFEDITCDE 1 > A FRFEDITWRD 50 > A FRFDATEFMT 5 > A FRFTIMEFMT 5 > A FRFDATACTG 2 > A FRFLONGDES 2000 > >An application would be used to design data files and would use this "FRF" >file (it would NOT be SEU!). Probably WDSCi / Code/400 does something >along these lines, although probably still is limited to the traditional FDF. >The "design" application would then generate the required DDS or DDL, as >requested. There's other stuff as well, I'm sure, that could be added to >that format, but it gives the gist of what I'm talking about. That is getting to a repository I was talking about. I would like to define things once (especially database fields), and reference them unlimetedly (to adapt a similar phrase). The RDBM system should supply this functionality. The AS/400 is a data base machine, so a lot of data is already available. I base my view on a repository with a demo version of S-Designer (about 1995, running on Windows 3.1). It was a data base design tool (still is under a different name) with a conceptual model and an application model cnnot remember the propriate name). In this programme there was a repository, in which you can define base fields. When adding fields into a table you could select such a base field from the repository to refer to. ( I hope I put that clearly). (Then you could generate SQL scripts for many different and popular RDBMs, like DB2, Oracle, Sybase; it could even generate DDS source.) >IDDU? With all due respect Carel, if I wanted to torture myself, I'd rather >listen to the Bee Gees. It's been so long that I checked it out after your >post, created three field defs, a record format def, and a file def, but >darned if I can figger out how to create the file object! IDDU is so >obscure after all these years because, IMO, it was such a kludge to begin >with. And it never got better. Might as well stick with SEU DDS specs! I have not done anything in IDDU since my RPG training in 1990. I did not even know it was still on the machine (Why? Who is using it?). But what I can remember (vaguely), it was tedious, indeed. I was more referring to the assumed concept of IDDU, I thought it had (if it had any but torturing DB designers).
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