I've been converting dictionaries from a D3 dbms and am wondering what is considered "best practices" in virtual attribute design.
Does one build standard "D"irect fields first then use these fields to build virtual attributes (I-Descriptors) or should one use the direct field references, "EXTRACT()" or "<n,n,n>", in virtual attributes? DEPOSITED 001 D The date of the deposit. 002 2 VOID 001 D Is this a voided receipt? 002 12 DEPDATE 001 I The displayed deposit date (if not voided). 002 IF VOID = "" THEN DEPOSITED ELSE "*Voided*" or DEPDATE 001 I The displayed deposit date (if not voided). 002 EXTRACT( @RECORD, 2, 0, 0 ) ; EXTRACT( @RECORD, 12, 0, 0 ) ; IF @2 = "" THEN @1 ELSE "*Voided*" The obvious concern is if a direct field definition is renamed, then all references to the old field name need to be changed. I rarely rename a field, until I started exposing the data to other data sources and was forced to clean up the field names. So, hopefully, this won't be an issue in the future. Any thoughts. Bill Haskett ------- u2-users mailing list u2-users@listserver.u2ug.org To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/