Re: just curious - Number of Parms

[jpcarr@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Again, I think you completely missed my point.   The number vs character
debate is irrelevant.

I don't care if it's in the fashion of "Customer ID"s  or whether zip codes
are numeric or character.
And yes,  I switched from YYMMDD as soon as date data types were available.
(As a matter of fact, we even did it on V3R1 with only RPGIII, and brought
them in character mode till
RPGIV was available)

My point was defining any field that would be passed as a parameter with
the same definition as it would be in a data base file, or the data
dictionary.

"If it's not going to be used for computational functions,  it's character"
Well good.  but that point had nothing to do with my post.

My post was for the people still using Parameters, Not procedures(Answering
"How many parms is the limit")

The technique of using externally defined data structures was a feeble/old
attempt to standardize
program parameter definitions external to the program and to correlate
those definitions with the data
dictionary.

Now then,  What do you see the future of PCML ?

http://www.as400.ibm.com/developer/education/abstracts/pcml_abs.html
Do a search on http://www.as400.ibm.com/   for PCML.

I can see that this thread will mutate for a week.
John Carr

-------------------------------------------
John,

Okay so we're MOSTLY on the same page. :)

Regarding your following comment, I would strongly argue that you don't
have a customer NUMBER. You have a customer ID! IMO, this is the same
sort of long-standing industry "mistake" that helped lead to the Y2K
(thought I'd NEVER type that letter combination again!) debacle.

With respect to Y2K, insisting on YYMMDD type formats for dates was one
of those habits the industry fell into and stayed in. We all know the
resulting costs. With respect to "Customer Numbers", I submit that it is
much better to move away from that nomenclature and begin referring to
the entities in the fashion of "Customer IDs". Then perhaps we can get
away from defining these entities in the database in a numeric format.
You never know when you're going to need a value that contains something
other than numeric-only data. Now that I've introduced the topic, let me
use a more demonstrative example - Zip Codes.

Limiting the conversation momentarily to the USA, Zip Codes often are
defined as numeric. In fact, in the not so distant past, they were
defined as 5 digits in length. Of course, 9 is a more appropriate length
now. But, all of a sudden your company decides to do business outside of
the USA -- hmm, now we need alpha characters, too! And, there's nothing
that prevents USA standards to change to allow alpha characters.

This having been said, I submit that it's best to leave numeric
definitions to those entities that indicate quantitative data and avoid
the type of problems mentioned.

Thoughts?

Gary Guthrie
REAL Solutions Technical Support
NEWS/400 Technical Editor



> To me the bigger sin(being a data base bigot) is
> using a 15,5 parameter variable for (say) a customer number or invoice
> number when my data dictionary defines it as 7,0.    I want that
attribute
> of the DB customer entity to cascade everywhere I used customer number.



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