Posted by Bruce on November 02, 2005 at 07:23:52:
Jim
Repeating fields in a record may seem like a good idea at first, but think about this example:
Customer master file where I need 7 different sub-keys by: Name, Salesman, State, Buying Group, Affiliate, Ranking, Type of Customer, plus others...
I would need to repeat customer # 7 extra times to put the file in the order I need.
Plus, what if they decide they want:
Salesman file sorted by Buying Group and Customer Type and
Type of customer file sorted by Salesman and Buying Group and
Customer by state file to be by salesman, etc.....
I would be repeating fields all over the place.....
Tom's idea of allowing a sub key to be defined by specifying multiple (starting position,length) combinations would solve all problems that I can see, without repeating the same fields many times.