Re: Writing to multiple physical files with the same format

Hi Charles,

I don't know enough at the moment to tell how often it's going to need to open/close. When the trigger fires on the common file, the trigger program is going to be using a logical file over all the facilities' physical files to determine if it needs to write to a separate file for that facility. It may not need to very often.

However, what I would like to do is use a multi-format logical, with one format for each physical file, and a format naming convention that would let me construct the format name for a given facility. Then the only trick is being able to specify a variable format name on a WRITE.

I'm not sure, but it appears as if the C Language _rformat() function would allow this. Combined with the _rwrite(), I might be able to do it, but I've never used these functions, so I guess I'll be having some fun the next few hours.

*Peter Dow* /
Dow Software Services, Inc.
909 793-9050
pdow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:pdow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> /

Wilt, Charles wrote:

Peter,

I don't think the open/close would be a problem.

Simply leave the file open, on the next call, check to see if it's for the same facility. If not,
then close the current file and reopen the correct one.

While you normally want a trigger program to avoid open/close, that's really only a consideration when
the trigger is fired for lots of records. As long as your trigger is fired for lots of records within
a single facility at a time, the extra open/closes when switching facilities should be insignificant.

Now if you update 1 record for Facility A, then one for B, one for C,...

You'd have a problem.