iX V6.5 (30391-90011)

30 Chapter1

Introduction

File Consolidation

Most information processing systems that serve more than one application area contain

duplicate data. For example, a vendor's name can appear in an Inventory ﬁle, an Accounts

Payable ﬁle, and an Address Label ﬁle.

The data stored in these three ﬁles probably varies slightly from ﬁle to ﬁle, resulting not

only in wasted ﬁle space but also inconsistent program output. Redundant and

inconsistent information severely impedes any system's capacity to deal with large

amounts of data.

File consolidation into a database eliminates most data redundancy. Through the use of

pointers, logically related items of information are chained together, even if they are

physically separated. In the example of vendor names and addresses, only one set of data

would be stored. Using logical associations, the data can be used by any program needing

it. Because there is only one record to retrieve, the work required for data maintenance is

greatly reduced. Finally, all reports drawn from that item of information are consistent.

Special Information Needs

The requirement for one-time information in a format that has never been requested is no

longer a problem for data processing users. The user with a special data requirement can

get to any subset of information on the database, frequently without the intervention of a

programmer.

Volatile analytical data requirements can be ﬁlled in a minimal amount of time by the

people who need the data. The time savings in programming overhead and report

speciﬁcation generation can be enormous.

Native Language Support (NLS/3000) can be used with TurboIMAGE/XL, which allows

character sets other than US ASCII to be used in deﬁning a database and allows data to be

sorted in a database according to the local alphabet. NLS enhancements are recognized by

four TurboIMAGE/XL utilities: DBSCHEMA, DBUTIL, DBUNLOAD, and DBLOAD. For more

information on these utilities, refer to the NLS/3000 Reference Manual and chapters 6

and 8 in this manual.