Re: ODBC was: Trigger programme without a trigger.

Philosophy? Best tool...

If you wrote a 5250 program, a C/S program, a web based program or
whatever would you ever solely rely upon either
- trigger and constraint errors
- I/O module
to flag which fields are incorrect? Or, would you do some error checking
at the client in an effort to "better" handle the errors? For example if
a parameter to the I/O module followed some of the same constructs as your
average IBM API and has something like
- 5i 0 Number of errors
- 5i 0 Offset to error list
- 5i 0 Size of each error entry
...
- Field in error
- Message id of error
- Message data
- (repeat for each error)

Or, would you do some rudimentary error checking at the client like:
Birthdates for a new hire cannot go back into the 1500's. We only allow
(M)ale, (F)emale, (U)ndetermined for sex.

I suspect that you would try to handle many of these errors at the client
in the belief that it might make it easier to highlight the right field on
the screen, etc.
Now, if you are already doing this client validation, and the client is
THE ONLY interface that will be updating the data, why not do all the
validation there? You've got a dedicated processor just to do that (your
EDI PC), it will use less bandwidth, etc.
Now, I am not advocating ODBC validation for all my files. But, in this
case, it seems to make sense.

<snip>
Because I'm not exaggerating when I say I would fire anyone who did this.
</snip>
How many W2's do you file for your employees? :-)



Rob Berendt