Re: /free vs Fixed (was: RPGIII to get a facelift?)

Since I know jack about MSSQL I'll take your word for it.

Rob Berendt
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Group Dekko Services, LLC
Dept 01.073
PO Box 2000
Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com





Tony Carolla <carolla@xxxxxxxxx> 
Sent by: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
10/29/2004 03:35 PM
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Re: /free vs Fixed (was: RPGIII to get a facelift?)






Thanks Bob.  I hadn't made use of that BIF yet. 

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 08:35:47 -0500, rob@xxxxxxxxx <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Tony,
> I wouldn't think you'd have to concatenate leading zeros.  Wouldn't the
> 'X' edit code do it?

There is no place to specify an edit code on the %Char BIF -- only a
date format.  As Bob told me -- %Editc() is the way to go here. and
yes--'X' should work.


> And some would argue that concatenating several numeric fields into one 
is
> a no-no.  Why not leave them as separate fields?  This ain't a S/36 - 
the
> key fields don't have to be contiguous.  I have seen one numeric field
> converted into alphanumeric.  In a package.  The database designer would
> have preferred numeric.  However a valid marketing requirement was that
> they support people who converted from a different package into theirs 
and
> their previous package might have used alphanumeric values for that 
field.

No, I might not have clarified the point.  You see, we have four
fields in our database that distinguish all accounts uniquely, as
follows:

Site ID - 3 Alpha
Family ID - 9 Packed
Member ID - 2 Zoned
Creation date  - Date

This works beautifully for keyed access, search screens, pretty much
everything, on the production system.  I am creating a copy of the
data for our data warehouse, which is built in MSSQL, with
BusinessObjects overlaid.  The point here is to make one field that
'unique'-ifies each account.  Adding in the zeros makes it easier to
deal with on the reporting side.  The way we have the data warehouse
set up, if you don't have a single field that is unique, then all
reports might summarize based on same site ID, same family#, etc...

I would never store account numbers in an OLTP production system with
numerics pushed into alpha fields.  This would be insane.



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