Re: Beyond belief???

!!!! Just make sure he is not one of the programmers!! ;-) >From: paulw@wfsoftware.co.uk (Paul Watson) >Reply-To: paulw@wfsoftware.co.uk >To: informix-list@iiug.org >Subject: Beyond belief??? >Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 23:31 +0100 (BST) > >I still can't believe this, the more I think about it the less I believe >it but it happened today. I'm currently working for a client that is >having their entire manufacturing and accounting system replaced with a >new Informix based system written by a third party software house. Lots >of data conversion and table loads and file transfers - nothing difficult. > Obviously to make sure to two systems are the same the software house are >running comparison reports. Again nothing special. > >But where the software house surpass themselves is in the generation of >the difference reports. To report and correct the data they do the >following. > >1 Flat file both tables in their entirety. >2 Use awk to extract the columns they are interested into two more >files >3 Sort these files into a new set of files >4 grep to the two files together to produce a difference report >5 Use the difference report as the input to another grep to find the >full lines >6 Combine the difference lines with the original load file >7 Drop and reload the table >8 Repeat all the above to ensure no rows where missed. > >When asked why they did all this I was told it was the only way. But why >not just compare the two tables in Informix I was told by one of the >installation guys that he didn't know you could do that. > > > >Paul Watson # I don't suffer from >WF Software Ltd. # stress, I'm just >Tel. (+44) 1436 674729 # a carrier >Fax. (+44) 1436 678693 # >www.wfsoftware.com ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com