My blustery 0.02061 cents.
Just about anything can serve as a PK, so long as ALL values are unique.
The code used to generate keys MUST repeat MUST eliminate all
opportunities for variance in key structure. When one departs from plain
vanilla INTEGERs into the realm of text or decimal strings, guaranteed
uniqueness is held hostage to the arbitrary criteria chosen to assemble
said string. The more one has to think about the composition of a key
value, the greater the likelihood of confusion and corruption down the
line.
In the "real world" of dollars and cents, I can get away with "two
cents" being "$0.02" or "$0.02003 depending on how the parties to the
transaction understand the MEANING of the value, and the context (say,
purchase order or invoice) within which the value appears. Those two
values coexist just fine for the manufacture and sale of 250,000 carbon
steel flat washers. As PK values, sugar in the relational gas tank.
All of which is to say a Primary Key should have no meaning other than
that of being a UNIQUE SERIAL NUMBER for a row of data within a given
table. The datatype should refuse structural reformatting. There is no
sequencing except (n+1), no categorization, no sub-structures vulnerable
to manipulation by formatting. That means no items with real-world
meaning, such as invoice numbers, product serial numbers, etc.;
certainly no value deserving of its own column wherein an unexpected
duplication doesn't leave you with a smoked, carmelized engine on the
shoulder of the Jersey Turnpike on a sleeting New Year's Eve around
midnight. Good luck with the tow.
So, INTEGER it is. No criteria beyond:
SET VAR vprimaryKey INTEGER = ( (MAX(vprimaryKey)) + 1 )
Ok, so that was more like $0.04.
Best, Bruce
Bruce A. Chitiea
SafeSectors, Inc.
1142 S Diamond Bar Blvd # 442
Diamond Bar CA 91765-2203
[email protected]
(909) 238-9012 m
------ Original Message ------
From "Ronald C Peterson" <[email protected]>
To "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Date 11/9/2023 7:11:15 AM
Subject Re: [RBASE-L] - Where do I set my Vars?
What about using a numeric data type with fixed decimal location as a
primary key?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:[email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of
[email protected] <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 8, 2023 6:07 PM
To:[email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: [RBASE-L] - Where do I set my Vars?
If I understand correctly, by Universal Key you mean a Primary Key with
Foreign keys linked. I personally would not use a real or double type
as Primary key, precisely because of the problems you are encountering.
You can have the same value generated at different time and depending
on how is computed can default to a different valuer, or two different
values that default to the same value. All my primary keys, and by
extension foreign keys, have the type INTEGER or TEXT.
Now, if you want to change the type, you need to go to all the linked
tables, disable the primary/foreign link to the primary table an rename
them to a temporary name. Then, you can go to the primary table and
change the type to what ever you need it to be, and the n go back to
the secondary tables and change the name back to the original at which
time they will adopt the new type and then re-ink them to the primary
table, makes sense? There is a rename command, but if I recall
correctly, will not work with linked columns. If you are going to do
this, I would suggest converting your REAL values to INTEGER and use
them as the primary key.
At one time, I had the need to change the text length of several
primary columns and their corresponding foreign columns in numerous
tables as the needs changed. I wrote a program where you would select
the name of the primary table, primary key and the new length and the
application would do the entire process described above automatically.
If you need to do this once, you can do it manually; however, if you
have multiple occurrences, writing a program to do it would be the best
way.
Javier,
Javier Valencia, PE
14315 S Twilight Ln
Olathe, KS 66062
913-915-3137
From:[email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
Lin MacDonald
Sent: Wednesday, November 8, 2023 3:02 PM
To:[email protected]
Subject: Re: [RBASE-L] - Where do I set my Vars?
Sadly, that's about when I wrote this! It is a Universal Key attached
to several other tables so I can't really change it to a double, I
guess
Lin
On Wed, Nov 8, 2023, at 12:43 PM, 'Karen Tellef' via RBASE-L wrote:
Welcome to the not-so-wonderful world of the "REAL" datatype. Long
ago in DOS days that was the only datatype (other than currency) that
allowed decimals. Unfortunately it isn't real accurate IMO (pun
intended). Most of us switched all those Real numbers to the DOUBLE
datatype. With Double, a 104.31 is always stored and displayed
exactly as 104.31. With Real, internally that number may be stored as
something like 104.309187983. So depending on your display
formatting, you could get different representations to the screen.
Looks like the 000.## type of formatting might be truncating. In my
example, it would display as 104.30 or 104.309 even tho the number is
actually 104.31. Someone else suggested using the ROUND function if
you know how many decimal places you want displayed.
Karen
On Wednesday, November 8, 2023 at 01:47:25 PM CST, [email protected]
<[email protected]> wrote:
Hello Razzak,
Thank you - that is what I was looking for. I knew there was a simple
solution.
I am getting a strange output though: the real number stored is
104.31
000.## prints as 104.30
000.### prints as 104.309
This is an unusual situation where the number stored could possibly be
4 numbers to the left of the decimal and 3 to the right (we have never
had more than 2 to the right)
thanks for the help!
Lin
On Tuesday, November 7, 2023 at 7:57:30 PM UTC-8 Razzak Memon wrote:
Lin,
Here's how ...
Please take a look at the attached illustration.
Open the report in Report Designer
Right-click on the Variable Object and select Display Format
Under the Display Format option change the Display Format to 0.000
Click on the [OK] button to save the Display Format
Click on the [Preview] Tab to preview while still in Report Designer
Save the report and close the Report Designer
That's all there is to it!
I hope it helps!
Very Best Regards,
Razzak
On 11/07/2023 8:53 PM EST Lin MacDonald <[email protected]> wrote:
This will sound silly, but I am working on a system that I wrote
several years ago, but can't remember most of what I wrote!
I have a report that prints a Var (type: Real) It is now printing
it with 7 places after the decimal point. I need it to print a max
of 3 places. Where do I set the number of places? I honestly can't
rmemeber!
Lin
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