External Data Areas - Multiple Companies, One Program

The discussion the other day on data structures brought to mind a problem
that I have been working on regarding data areas. I used a data area to
function as a sort of "truth table" for our company. O read it into a
program to determine if the next (or following) step is ready.



Works fine, but the owner decided that he wants to add a new company. There
will be, I am sure, some new programs for it, but the basic back office
processing is pretty much the same. So I am modifying the programs to
access the file depending upon the company. That's relatively easy.



The issue with the data area on disk is that I have not been able to find a
way in the manuals (that I understood, anyway) to access different data
areas. For example, a disk file can have a EXTFILE(some-name) with USROPN
that I then use to define that "some-name" before I open the file. I cannot
find anything similar for data areas on disk.



I could, I know, just define two data areas in the program(s) and then use
the same method I'm using for files to determine which data area to read.
But looking ahead, I wanted to make it flexible so that the next time he
sets up a new company, I will not have to go back into the program. I
could, for example, easily change it to a data file. But wondered if there
were any minimal coding changes that would accomplish the same effect.



Any ideas/thoughts welcomed.



Thanks.



Jerry C. Adams

Do what is right because it is right, and leave it alone. -Chiune Sugihara

IBM i Programmer/Analyst

--

NMM&D

615-832-2730