Packed vs. Signed db fields

["William A.\(Tony\) Corbett" <corbett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,
I'm currently involved in creation of coding "standards" for a shop
consisting of a few FT programmers and several contract programmers.

They are about to implement "standards" which say to make ALL numeric fields
in the db zoned fields.  The argument being for the "chance" that they MAY
at some time in the future have to interface with a PC package which MAY use
FTP to download AS400 files.

I'm arguing that signed numeric is not really "native" to the AS400
architecure, wastes disk space, and is a performance issue.  This one small
issue is a problem for me, since it is "just not right" and I have problems
with doing things that I feel are just wrong.  Expressing a (hopefully)
educated opinion is part of being a consultant, I feel.

The slight cumulative performance gain is enough for me, having worked on
over-taxed AS400s before where a nanosecond gained was a nanosecond gained.
They are saying that "disk is cheap" and that we have plenty of disk and
performance now.  I'd like to win this argument, since it just ain't right,
particularly for a "standard".

Does anyone have a convincing argument for this "small" issue, or any kind
of stats on the performance just thrown out the window?

TIA

AS/Resources, Inc.
William A.(Tony) Corbett
IBM Certified Specialist - AS/400 Developer
http://www.asresources.com
corbett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
770-587-4812 (office)
678-935-5006 (mobile)
fax:  404-663-4737