I'm looking at the doc on this and the rules on how it works are not clear.
I would appreciate the help of an expert on this. The doc has an example of 3 files and it shows each iteration in the processing and which files are "available" or N/A. File 1 key 3A is available twice - iterations 3 and 4. File 1 key 8A is available twice - iterations 11 and 12. My impression is that records with equal keys are available from innermost to outermost until a duplicate key is encountered. The simplest case is a 3-way merge to produce a completely sorted file. If a record is "available" twice, one needs to remember this and not process the record the 2nd time it is available. This isn't too bad for a 3-way merge but it gets more complicated as you add files. " Remember, the matching algorithm is hierarchical, so the key is exhausted on the lowest level before another record is processed from the next higher-level file." - This is from the documentation. This statement contradicts what happens in the table of iterations shown in the documentation. Please contact me offline. Regards, Pierre. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
