Re: (not entirely...) OT: OPINION... chicken entrails, runic stones, and crystal balls... WAS CoBOL moved to OO

From: Howard Brazee (howard_at_brazee.net)
Date: 01/02/04 

Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 16:32:16 GMT

On 2-Jan-2004, Doug Scott <dwscott@ieee.org> wrote:

> > 1. The purpose of producing a report is to provide "information".
>
> Yes, and printing it is only one way of presenting the data. Your objection
> seems to revolve around printing stuff, which I'll agree is largely
> unnecessary. But the numbers still have to be crunched, and it's still more
> efficient to crunch monthly figures once and store them for later retrieval
> rather than crunch them whenever an individual wants to glance at them.

And often more meaningful. Real-time doesn't give the same type of picture as
scheduled snapshots.

> Batch processing will survive because it's more efficient to extract periodic
> figures once rather than many times. The /presentation/ of these figures is
> distinct from extraction, and will change according to the technology
> available.

And it gives different information. Batch is designed to do a lot of
processing at an instant in time. (sure it takes longer - but our coding is
designed to make it work as if it were for an instant).

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