Re: PF Compiled Files with Dictionaries vs. SQL-Created Tables

Luis

Did you mention locales? Those define these very things. Same as the local settings stuff in Windows, in principal. Any Windows app can take advantage of the date formatting and time zone and other things, while the value is probably stored in a consistent manner, the presentation changes according to a template kind of thing.

That's not business rules, is it? For me, business rules are things for which check constraints can be useful. And referential constraints, for header-detail kinds of relationships, say.

Just thinking between real work efforts!

Vern

On 2/4/2011 2:36 PM, Luis Rodriguez wrote:

Luc,


But what happens if your data has to be used in different environments?


Let’s suppose that you have a data repository that has a date, e.g. an
expiration date. Let’s call it EXPDATE and give it a value of December 31,
2011.


If you are showing that info in the US, your date would be show as 12/31/11.
In Europe: 31.12.2011, etc. Another example would be the use of digits group
separators. In the US is a comma, many other countries use a period and
finally, ISO recommends a space (a “thin space”, in fact). Your application
has to do (and redo) the necessary editing according to the location it
would be used.

So it could be argued that the editing of data should be separated from the
data itself and be a part of the application (or “business logic”).


Now, with SQL you can “tie” your data to your business logic so, if you have
the proper UDF, you can automagically present the right format to the proper
audience (EU, US, etc.) and it would not matter which tool you are using to
display it (SDA, RPG Print, Query, DFU, Excel thru ODBC, etc).


Of course, regarding SQL there a lot of more benefits than simply data
editing .



Best Regards,


Luis Rodriguez
IBM Certified Systems Expert — eServer i5 iSeries