X-no-Archive:yes
Whoah, I disagree with that statement, there is a way to implement good,
safe, extensible list processing.  One has to keep in mind a few things.

1- List processing is fastest when it is reusing the prior list.
2- Numeric list processing is faster than Alphabetic list processing.
3- Numeric lists are prone to breakage is an item is deleted or inserted in
the schema.
4- Numeric and alphabetic lists are immune to additions or movement of
fields within a dataset.

With these thoughts in mind, I used to try and group the fields I wanted to
access in the various datasets by type and usage.  Then at the beginning of
the program, I would open the database and do a series of DBINFO with the
item-name in the order I wanted the data returned to the program.  Each
DBINFO call would return the corresponding item number for the numeric
list.  I would then do a DBGET mode 1 on that particular dataset and from
then on, that dataset would be accessed with the "*;" list construct.

Now, if a dataset needed to have more than one list to access it, I would
proceed as follows. The first value in the numeric list is the number of
items in the list, so programmatically, it was easy to shorten or expand
the list as needed during processing.  For example the DBGET might be 20
items, but the update might only be 16 items.  The program would simply
change the first value of the numeric list to 20 or 16 as needed.

With this method, the programs are immune to additions of fields in the
dataset and the insertion, removal or movement of any item in the items
list.  The only things that could affect the programs were renaming the
item (rare) and modifications to the fields it accessed in the dataset or
removal of said fields.

Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP America, Inc.
(800) 323-8863  (281) 288-7438         Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com                             www.hicomp.com


-----Original Message-----
From:   Leonard Berkowitz [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Wednesday, 02 December, 1998 6:05 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: Turbo Image List Processing

As a consultant, I saw one application (not where I am consulting now, I
hasten to
add!) where list processing was used, but the list of items consisted of
every item
in each data set. The combination of the worst of item lists and '@', eh?
========================
Leonard S. Berkowitz
mailto:[log in to unmask]
phone: (617) 972-9400 ext. 3250
fax:   (617) 923-5555