Re: File that has records constantly being added and deleted

Do each of the other jobs have the file open all the time?  If not, your
processing program could, at some predetermined (quiet) time or at
intervals, attempt a reorg.  I would think the wait time would be
minimal and (hopefully) the other jobs wouldn't be impacted.

In a perfect world, I'd vote for the data queue too.  But, on the
assumption it's too difficult to re-engineer, I'd try reusing deleted
records.  Your processing program will likely have to read from the
beginning of the file until eof() each time.  Not sure I understand why
you think it needs to be keyed.  

jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxx 09/25/2006 3:24:20 PM >>>

Here's the situation:

We have a file. Any arbitrary number of jobs can put 
records into the file; a single dedicated job reads the 
records, in arrival sequence, processes them, and deletes 
them. We thus have a file that rarely has more than a few 
active records, but accumulates lots and lots of deleted 
ones.

Is there a way to squeeze out deleted records without 
having to grab an exclusive lock on the file? Or would it 
be more sensible to set it to re-use deleted records, and 
modify the processing program to read by key? Or are there 
other ideas?

--
JHHL