Re: code description handling design

On 25 Jul 2012 09:03, Stone, Joel wrote:

I am building an ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) feed to transfer an
old Iseries app's data to a web interface system.

The old system uses many codes. Each code has a description in its
own file.

Examples:

* state code TX is described in the STATE file as "TEXAS".
* Status code "A" is described in the activity file as "ACTIVE".

There are 30 or so files.

My choices are: <<SNIP>>

Is it worth it to load all these unrelated codes and descriptions
into one file??

Any suggestions?

The paired data is noted to be in TABLEs already, so why not just use the database\SQL to get that data.? For example, create a logical VIEW to get the desired effect of replacing the code with its description:
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/201207/msg00866.html

There should be little reason to combine some thirty sets of data, only to have some code [SQL or otherwise] select the desired subset. Existing code [SQL or otherwise] presumably already references the existing thirty or so TABLEs.? So logically combining the row data seems of little value, physically combining a copy of the rows causes the information to be stored in two places instead of only where that data was normalized which adds a requirement for synchronization, and physically combining the rows along with purging the original TABLE.data breaks anything dependent on those TABLEs.

Regards, Chuck