Re: main difference between expandable and singlepage subfile

User is looking at a list of outstanding invoices.
Notices that one is for a large amount and wonders how many others are in that category.
Sorts the data in amount sequence and looks for the invoice that triggered the thought
Can't find it because (in your scenario) a payment has been made and it is no longer in the list.
User spend a few minutes paging around and thinking about it and decides they must have mis-membered the amount.
Changes back to the original sequence and looks for the customer number - can't find it either for the same reason.

They have just wasted several minutes because when they asked you to resequence the data they (apparently) foolishly expected you to resequence the SAME data.

A little bit of their trust in the system just died.

I have actually watched this happen on a number of sites. Sometimes when I lecture on this kind of topic and mention this situation I can watch the lightbulbs go on in some peoples heads as they have the "Oh! that's why the XDYX screens confuse the users!" moment.

And I was talking about why a load-all was my preferred approach. Not expandable (although similar issues apply) or page-at-a-time.

But as you well know - unless there is no alternative I wouldn't waste time doing anything with a 5250 in the first place.

On Dec 30, 2019, at 4:23 PM, Booth Martin <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I can't imagine the scenario you describe, therefore I am not understanding what you have said. Why would I be looking at, say, Smith and decide to Filter for %mith? I mean, the user is already there?

Clearly I am missing something.

What I see mostly is a user working from a random stack of input data, in which case the user is bouncing all around the file. Or a user is working from ordered input of some particular field so a subfile that sorts by columns fills that need. Adding filters on columns is easy and, for the super user, a welcome surprise.

In other words I see no real case today for either the expandable _or_ the singlepage subfile. The days of the 300 baud modems are behind us.


On 12/30/2019 2:12 PM, Jon Paris wrote:

You've clearly never watched a confused user spend time trying to find the record they were looking at that caused them to want to sort/filter the subfile to see "how many others are like this".

My personal take is that once you have displayed a list of items and the user asks you to sort it or filter it - then you should be sorting/filtering_that_ list - not a new one.

That's why I always build subfiles in memory and sequence/filter internally not by re-doing the query which is what your approach results in.

Of course the user should always have the option to refresh the list - but I don't think it should ever be refreshed "behind their back".

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