jharper@euroies.uucp (Jerry Harper) (12/10/88)
I have been asked to post this on behalf of someone who doesn't have net access, please email replies if possible. The problem is fairly well recognised, I imagine: an item arrives in a factory and is added as a new record with major field SERNUM. Each transaction involving the item also generates a new record. For instance, when it is shipped to a customer, when it is returned for repair by a customer, when it is shipped out again, etc., all appear as individual records containing the same serial number for the item. This is not a very efficient way of organising data on a PC running DBASE 3, obviously. Does the participation of the item in N transactions necessarily demand the creation of N records, or is there a means for making a "bigger" record with fewer of them? DBASE 3 offers 'memo' fields of 50 characters width which may offer a partial solution, but doing a LOCATE/FIND/SEEK on memo files (i.e. text files) when already the database is 1.1MB is size is certainly daunting. Any advice/help would be appreciated. jharper@euroies.uucp