>Peter, what a good idea. I should write an article for FoxPro advisor about data-driven technology.

Yeah, do it!


>Anyhow, the days of program code changes being required to change a system's logic path and actual actions are LONG gone. I am right now building a system for a user (mainframe - excuse the curse word) that loads internal cobol II arrays and calls data-driven subroutines to determine many things that mediocre programmers would hard code.
>
>Get the logic out of the program and into tables! That's the ticket.
>
>You can even take the FoxPro code out of the code and into tables.
>
>I love FoxPro's extreme flexibility!

I've been thinking a lot about date-sensitive datebases. You give the system a rundate and ask for a report and you get the same report that was originally produced on that date. This requires not only keeping all of the detail records with an effective date on each but keeping master records as a set of records with effective dates. E.G. I change the address in my ADDRSS record. The old record doesn't dissapear; it just gets overshadowed by the new record with a more recent effective date. Unless I tell the system that the date is before I made the change--then the system gives me my previous address.

A logical extension of these concepts is to store all of the business rules in the database also with effective dates. Then the data can be consistent with the rules at any given point in time.

With the price of storage plummeting I think these types of scenarios are possible.

Peter