Browse Lookups - WARNING....Long rambling post....read at your discretion

[Richard Kreiss]

Create a demand index using co (contains) in a selection set. You can use fo io to write the selection set or allow the user in input the value. This will eliminate the necessity of building an additional file. 

Keep in mind that this type of search even with an Index will take time. 

Richard
Sent from my iPhone

> On Jun 26, 2018, at 9:08 PM, Scott Walker via Filepro-list <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Thanks to all for your responses to my browse lookup issue.
> 
> I've decided that the browse lookup feature just is not right for this task so I'll do a bit of coding.  I am scanning a LOT of records looking for any record where the Description field contains a specified string of text anywhere in the  Description field
> 
> The browse lookup is not optimal in this situation since there are hundreds of thousands of records and I am looking at each to see if a particular field contains a specified string of data anywhere in the field.  So I am looking up a record and seeing if  lookup(2) co "XYX123".  If not I use the "drop" command to eliminate it from the browse lookup.  Since there is no index that can be used to narrow down the number of records I am having to look at, I am just using the index built on order date.  The string of text may be found in one of the very first records I look at and not found again until hundreds of thousands of records later or perhaps not be found at all.
> 
> So this brings up the issue of whether there is a more efficient way to do this?
> 
> One thought, when I write the record with the order description, let's say for Order# 555555,  I could  write some addition records in a file that exists just to make the searching for a specified string faster.
> For example, if the Description field contains "12345XYZ123" I would write these records to the extra file:
> 
>    Desc "key"    Order#
>    12345        555555
>    2345X        555555
>    345XY        555555
>    45XYZ        555555
>    XYZ12        555555    
>    YZ123        555555
>    ZI23        555555
>    123        555555
>    23        555555
>    3        555555
> 
> That would allow me to build an index on the 5 character description "key" string, and when the user asked for anything containing the string "XYZ123" I could use the first 5 characters of their request to narrow down the searched records to those in the index with the desc key of XYZ12.  That would give me the order numbers to look at in the regular file.
> 
> Is the overhead of this going to kill me.....for example, on a given order, we can have up to 999 line items with up to 99 lines of description per line item, with each line of description allowing up to 54 chararcters.  
> 
> Am I better off trying to come up with something outside of fp....some sort of user call to an outside program that scans the key file looking for the specified string and returns the fp record numbers for me to look at inside fp?
> 
> Regards,
> Scott Walker
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Filepro-list [mailto:filepro-list-bounces+scottwalker=ramsystemscorp.com at lists.celestial.com] On Behalf Of Bruce Easton via Filepro-list
> Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2018 1:58 PM
> To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com