RE: Is this the University of Midrange.com? (was Re: Comp in DDS)

Just another pov, which is that the "bad old days" weren't NECESSARILY all
bad.

>From a UI pov, back in these so-called bad old days and now if I was
designing my own systems, I did and would use DDS validation.  I used DDS to
make sure numeric input was numeric by definition, and required fields were
entered and that was it.  On the screens I designed, a user could press
[enter] and immediately get feedback on what was mandatory, and what was
not.  This reinforced the design of putting the labels in all caps, if
mandatory, which I'd do differently these days.  I didn't, but would now,
also have binary inputs (all those Y=Yes, N=No type-a fields) validated and
defaulted when possible.  Might do same on date fields, if DDS is capable.

Anyhoo...  Some would say an aid to the user like this isn't WORTH the
belt-and-suspenders approach to data validation.  It "only" takes a
couple/few seconds (minutes) to do ALL the validation in program code and
then give the user some feedback.  As, to me plainly obviously, you would
re-edit the data Much more thoroughly in a program anyway.  (A program, or
better yet I would guess, in an I/O *MOD OR trigger *OR stored procedure *OR
whatever...)

As far as numerics, if the input device CAN *guarantee* the numericity of
the data, why code for the impossibility?  Granted, one does not always Have
the option of what input device generates the data.  But if it comes from a
reliable package (or trading partner) that DOES *in experience* ALways
produces numeric data, why take the approach (what I call the Cobol
approach) of defining as alpha and editing and converting, in the first
place??

| -----Original Message-----
| [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of rob@xxxxxxxxx
| Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 11:29 AM

| I know what you meant.  On input right?  Not on output.  And, as others
| pointed out, some people do use alphanumerics for numeric entry.
| My point
| is that you can take this not doing ANY editing via DDS to an extreme.
| But, it may make business sense to not do it via DDS.  This would make
| reusable code for web, batch interface (like EDI), etc.
|
| In the bad old days you put a 5294 out at a remote site with a 4800 baud
| modem.  Then it made sense to use as many DDS keywords to do the checking
| as possible.  Because it would do the editing on the remote controller,
| and then, if it passed, send the data back to you.  This could have a
| significant impact on response time.