Letting the User Select Level Breaks?

["Clare Babcock" <cbabcock@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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News from Canada!
News is so dull here in Canada that the various opinions on the cycle
and level breaks made national headlines!!!

I have really enjoyed the commentary on level breaks so much so that I feel 
obligated
to add my two cents worth.

A question was posed as to how you might let the user choose level breaks.
Coming from the old school of thought (the land of the cycle) my thoughts are 
as follows.

I question the business case for having more than 9 levels of totals, however, 
that is not what this question
is about.

Key Assumptions:

The user knows more about level breaks than the IT staff.
Large data base files.
This is an often requested series of reports to be run in batch.
A screen is required to make the level break selections possible.
Maximum of nine levels of totals satisfies the reporting requirements.
I will use 8 levels. I believe this means 64 possible combinations. Yikes!!!
Elements are : Company, Division, Branch,Warehouse,Product Group, Location, 
Product Line, Product.
Lowest level of detail/summary is Product, Highest level of detail/summary is 
Company.

How to:

To keep it simple lets say your users will use at the very least 3 combinations.

Use OPNQRYF to sort the data base file in the order selected by the user.
Predicated on what order was selected call an RPG program that is coded to 
handle the levels selected.

Example: user wants summary totals by Warehouse, product line, product L3-L2-L1 
highest to lowest summary levels.
This selection is passed to a CL program .

Some type of conditional code goes here such that the correct OPNQRYF statement 
is used.
OVRDBF FILE(whatever) TOFILE(rpgfilename) SHARE(*YES)
OPNQRYF FILE(whatever) FORMAT(whatever) KEYFLD(Warehouse ProductLine Product)

CALL (&pgpgmname)  /* assumes I specs C specs O specs are coded with level 
indicators as selected by user */

CLOF(whatever)
DLTOVR *ALL


Drawbacks

Overhead  involved in sorting.
Multiple copies of skeleton level break program to account for possible 
combinations.
Increased complexity should more than eight or nine combinations (like 64) be 
required.
Code that is never executed due to user preference as to summary levels.

Benefits

Using the cycle execution is  very fast.
A well written skeleton program is easily modified to accommodate various 
summary levels.
Somewhat happy (helium induced)  users

Recommendation

Try something else!

Regards,
Clare









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