Hi again, Dragan, and thanks for the reply.

>Exactly - that's why I said it was a minor issue.

Yep. Record and index cache size on server...monitoring the server
statistics frequently and on a regular basis...stuff like that is the
worry with RDBMS.

>In my first year of professional coding, I came to my boss with an idea to speed
>something up. First thing he asked me was "where is it used"? The meaning was actually
>"how often does it run". His rule of thumb was - if it's stalling user input, do it right
>away and take whatever time it takes to do.

Same with me. End-user usability and an efficient program UI is the key,
IMHO. Before I write code, I ask the client if I can do what their end users
are doing for a week or so. It's good to know what they do for a living, and,
more importantly, the sequence in which they do it and how they get
things done. IMHO, that's time well spent.

A few months ago, we discussed mileage calculation between two points. The
users here were stalling on mileage look-ups via the web, which usually took
around 5 minutes or so to get the required information. In my book, that's too
long, especially when I knew that their had to be a way to just type in the city
names (locally in the app), click a button, and then the mileage and calculated
cost would just pop up -- and on to the next entry. That one mod turned 5 minutes
into 30 seconds.


>If it's in a daily job, do it if they complain, if it's visibly slow, or if you
>can see how one hour of your work can save two hours of runtime over a month.

I like your boss :^). From your description, a pragmatist and good, logical programmer.

> If it's in a monthly job, do it if you really have nothing else to do.

Pretty much how we do things here, too. That, and "add that idea we had on
the back burner to the code and see what the end users think about it. If they
like it, keep it; if they don't, yank it out and try adding something else."
Eventually, you can't think of anything else to add that would speed things
up or make the program nicer, and that's when you know that you're done! :^)

Best Regards,

Randall