RE: Populating fields based on field name in a file

> From: qsrvbas@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> I would normally agree with this, but can't under the circumstances.
Now,
> if there's a technique using CHAIN/UPDATE that can be shown to work
for
> what the original question was, and it doesn't involve so many levels
of
> abstraction as to be near impossible to understand, I'd sure love to
see
> it.
> 
> To summarize the general problem -- the field, format and file names
are
> not known at compile-time. They are supplied by reading a 'File/field
> Definitions' file. Please describe what the F-spec should look like
for
> the file and how the accompanying CHAIN/UPDATE statements should be
coded.
> (That's not the precise problem; but I think a solution to that could
be
> directly applied to the problem in this thread.)

This is an incorrect assessment of the problem.  The files and fields to
be updated ARE known at compile time; which file and field simply differ
based on a setting in a database.

If it were truly "any field, any file, any time" I might agree, but
unless you are creating your own DFU, this is a rather useless business
exercise.  In fact, I can't think of any normal business application
where you don't know at design time which fields need to be updated.


> And I'd still be interested in a good way to do it in RPG without SQL.

And putting aside the fact that this is not what was asked for, I'd be
interested in a business application that needs it.  I'm hard-pressed to
think of a situation where the same event can update one of two
completely arbitrary fields (and user-defined) fields based on the
setting of a third.  Other than some sort of really ugly code-generator,
I just can't think of the need.

Joe