RE: Populating fields based on field name in a file

> From: Buck
> 
> I stand by my statement that trying the SQL solution is better than
> summarily throwing it out without trying it at all.

That's fine, Buck.  I'm not trying to argue the business decision
aspect, although I have a strong aversion to "good enough", since
something that is good enough in testing often isn't when it scales to
production.

The RPG technique is just as easy to write as the SQL but you have to
hardcode all the fields.  But from a business standpoint, if the
maintenance were the issue, it wouldn't take a smart person very long to
write a generator for that particular piece of code.  Not only that, but
I think the SQL technique gets a little more difficult when you start
talking about updating numeric fields, or dates.

In any case, when you look at the overall decision, you're right that it
might well be acceptable to lose the performance (and the loss is
significant) to go the SQL route; I just want to make sure it's clear
that the SQL solution WILL be slower.  If performance is an issue,
single-record UPDATEs are a poor solution.

Joe