[Info-vax] Looking for some text search ideas

[David Froble]

Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2014-09-27, Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> wrote:
>> On 2014-09-27, David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>> The policy is, you get a group of product records from the 
>>> manufacturers, and you just plug it in.  There is a rather good reason 
>>> for this.  Some third party, don't know who, has parts explosion 
>>> pictures for most of this stuff, and everybody needs to be using the 
>>> same part numbers, otherwise when someone selects a part from the GUI 
>>> software, there won't be a match on the distributor's system.  So 
>>> whatever the manufacturer's set up is used.
>> So we have established that the date here doesn't come from Random J
>> Office-Clerk.  Excellent.  :-)
>>
> 
> Actually, it's potentially rather bad (depending on the maximum size of
> the field for the description).
> 
> If David's working from a manufacturer's master price/parts file, then
> how does he know the manufacturer hasn't truncated/collapsed the
> description to fit in a fixed length field in some database ?
> 
> Unless you can guarantee the full keywords are in the description, the
> only reliable way to solve this specific problem is to work with the
> manufacturer's part numbers and use the parts explosion pictures to
> identify the specific part number if you don't already know it.
> 
> Even if you get a list of head gaskets from a database, then how do
> you know _for_ _sure_ which one is the correct one to use unless there's
> additional attributes in the database specifying the specific range
> of products this head gasket will fit.
> 
> Yes, this is day job territory for me, and yes, no one has ever asked
> me for a lookup by part description and yes, these are the questions
> I would ask if they ever did.
> 
>>> Part supersuccession (happens very often) would also suffer.
>> Tell me about 'em.  Supercessions where multiple parts become whole
>> assemblies or vice versa can be a pain to handle.  Things get interesting
>> when a manufacturer re-uses a superseded part number and you or your
>> retailers still have the original part number in stock.
>>
> 
> It's probably wiser not to get me started on the subject of part
> number supersessions...
> 
> Simon.
> 

Hey, I'm just the bit pusher.  I get a request, I try to understand it 
and fulfill it.  How it gets used isn't my problem.  Usually they don't 
even take some of my suggestions.  This thing really should be a global 
capability and not just coded into a single program (which is what 
happened).  Bill used a MAP statement too, static storage, and when he 
set it to 10 million elements, VMS began to groan.  I thought a 
calculation of the required size and a get VM would be better.

Yeah, your observations are right on.

It's my guess that when the entire descriptions are displayed a user can 
then attempt to select the proper part.

But one thing I won't do is just say "you can't have that".  That's how 
we got non-IT department PCs all over the place.  Look at the mess that is.