Sometimes the Simple Things… Dictionary Ideas

Sometimes its the simple things in life. I have a favorite Dictionary record I’d like to share with all of you. It is the constant “1”. What can you do with a Dictionary Record of “1”? First, create a dictionary record with the constant “1” and call it “ITEMS” (see below).

Then if you want to know how many employees you have in each department (Assuming you have an EMPLOYEE file with a DEPT attribute)

LIST EMPLOYEE BREAK-ON DEPT BY DEPT TOTAL ITEMS DET-SUPP ID-SUPP (Your flavor of mutlivalue may vary on this)

You will get a list of departments with the number of employees in each department.

So anything you need to know how many of a certain type of item is in your file, you can modify the above query to provide that information.

Pick Flavor Dict Item (Thanks to Clif Oliver)

ITEMS

0001 S
0002 0
0003 ITEMS
0004
0005
0006
0007
0008 F;C1
0009 R
0010 8

Information Flavor Dict Item

ITEMS

0001 I
0002 1
0003
0004 ITEMS
0005 8R
0006 S