Not that I welcome change, but at times it is difficult to "standardize" a living breathing entity. In the beginning, IBD had only one Computer-Software group. Yes, just one. As the industry exploded, the need to find a more accurate way to measure this industry growth changed. Thus "Computer-Software" evolved into a sector which spawned a host of new sub-groups such as Computer-Software-Enterprise, Computer-Software-Medical, Computer-Software-Education/Entertainment, Computer-Software-Security, etc.
Another thing you will occasionally run across is that one company starts out making a certain type of product, then branches off into another product (still within the same basic industry sector). The second product takes off, they drop the old line and as a result the new product throws the company into another classification of industry group. So, as long as companies continue to innovate I never count on the groups remaining the same for any extended period of time. Joe Rogers --- In [email protected], "Lionel Issen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Joe: > > This is an overall malaise that affects our industry/commerce today. Nuts > and bolts engineers are familiar with standards and welcome them. Data, > computer, finance reporting, and cell phone types are unaware of the need > for standards or don't want to be "confined" by them. They act like the > electric industry used to when every manufacturer had a different size bulb > so that you had to get your electric fixtures and lights from the same > manufacturer. (This ended in the 1920s when Herbert Hoover, then Secretary > of Commerce, created the American National Voluntary Standards System that > got around the legalities that prevented the Federal Government from > developing standards.) > > > > In stock reporting there is no standard for indentifying by the tickers the > class of shares. With different data sources there is no standard for mutual > funds prefixes. QP use !, Reuters uses *. This can be a problem when you > are looking at data from different sources. QP has a dictionary module that > allows automatic conversions , but this doesn't deal with your problem. > Redoing all your previous work because HGS follows their own standard is a > slow tedious chore and you have my sympathies. > >
