Re: [Hardhats-members] Pointers and keys

[Gregory Woodhouse]

There are applications that use semantically meaningful values for the IEN, but I don't recommend doing this. In fact, I would recommend rather strongly that you do not do this. However, you CAN ensure that a field such as .01 be unique. You need to create new style cross-reference, and this will be done automatically for you if you make this field into a key. Being "clever" is seldom a good idea, but you can even make the "B" cross-reference the uniqueness index underlying the key if you really want to. I don't know if this is responsive to your  question, but I've worked with a number of files that attempt to have semantically meaningful .01 fields, and that really buys you very little and does cause a bunch of grief in the long run. Can you explain a little more what you mean by "backward pointer".  Are you wanting to quickly identify the (sub)records in another file pointing a record in your file? === Gregory Woodhouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] "A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson On Jul 29, 2005, at 8:02 PM, Thurman Pedigo wrote: With so much excitement, I hate to post such a mundane question as pointers and keys.  However, I have never been able to get KEYs to perform in the way I expect. I want to have file TESTFILE point to field .01 of another file so that I can use backward pointers. Further I would like to create a record in the file with a unique # to main the uniqueness of multiple instances of the same name in .01 field of the file. It seems I should be able to enter a unique # such as 12345 without having to encapsulate a new entry as the name file in quotes.  For instance if the name is DOE,JOHN  in the referenced field, I would like to enter 12346 (in field #2) to create a unique entry, then enter DOE,JOHN in field .01, separate from the first record than the 12345 and still allow the .01 field in this record to exist as “DOE,JOHN” . Is this workable? Or is this just bad policy?   I know this is sort of confused and will be difficult to sort out. Basically, I want to have field 2 as the UNIQUE ID for each record in TESTFILE, and .01 field point to a sort of parent file.   Thanks,   thurman