[thelist] Table Update Schedule (Tip for Tuesday)

Luther, Ron Ron.Luther at COMPAQ.com
Thu Apr 19 14:02:28 CDT 2001


Hi Gang,

I'm gonna be out on vacation (up in San Francisco) next Tuesday ... so I
thought I'd pay my tip now.

[Quick apology.  I just realized I have been calling things "Trigger".  I
didn't mean a database trigger.  I meant a table.  I just had a 'senior
moment' and mentally named the table "Trigger".  Sorry if that caused any
confusion.  I'll try to remember to call them "admin" tables.]


<tip type="value of admin tables" author="Ron Luther">
Although I've known about "admin" tables for quite some time, I hadn't
appreciated their usefulness until recently.

Last week I was working on a report (that somebody else wrote) that provided
users with the opportunity to select "one day"s worth of data from a large
table containing historical data.  [Roughly 20M records counts as 'large',
okay?]

Providing the users with a popup box of selectable dates meant scanning
through the entire table --- kinda pokey.

Fortunately, we have a small "admin" table [roughly 30,000] records that
contains a couple of fields like:

Table_Name_that_was_Updated
Date_of_Data_that_the_Table_was_Successfully_Updated_With

I have revised the report to select available dates from the "admin" table.
[pseudo-code: Select Date_..._With from "admin" table where
Table_..._Updated="the_one_I_want"]

Faster response for the user ... less resources/cycles used on the IM side
... "a good thing".

Of course ... this means I now have LOTS of old reports to "tune"! ... but
then again, I also get to write new reports to use up those cycles I'm
saving.

</tip>


RonL.




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