RE: Normalization was Left AS/400 and Returned

["Fisher, Don" <dfisher@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Too hard?  No, I don't think anything is too hard for the developers here.
Some current techniques require training, but they're not too difficult.

I wonder about the amount of i/o performed by my approach versus yours.
Assuming I'm intelligent enough to use a procedure in a service program to
retrieve the information, would OS/400 not be smart enough to place this
frequently used data into memory?  I believe I read once that it is so I
wonder what the performance impact would be, especially in an interactive
program.  Would anyone notice?

I don't know.  One of these days I should conduct an experiment. 

Something else to consider is how difficult would it be for an end user to
extract the data using a query tool like MS Access.  Some firms have these
"power" users that make their own reports and do research while scarce i.t.
resources are focused elsewhere.  A 366 character array would make that more
difficult.

I guess I'm agreeing that one does need to consider how the data is used
when normalizing.

Donald R. Fisher, III
Project Manager
Roomstore Furniture Company
(804) 784-7600 extension 2124
DFisher@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


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Splittin' hairs, I think.  Everything is degrees of difficulty, Don.  Is
it too hard for your programmers or not?
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I might have to schedule an operation to run
over 10 days, and thus I'll have to know all the working days.  By reading a
one-year array once, I'm covered and I can schedule all the
work for that item.

With a one-record per date approach, I'll be doing lots of I/O, over and
over again
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