Re: Productivity


"Frank Swarbrick" <Frank.Swarbrick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4vlc76F1bf56sU2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<snip>
What about the manager who wants to know the total amount of transactions
processed today? I guess there would be something that uses SQL to do
this,
selecting only transactions with a particular date. Not a bad idea.

I am very curious to know if there are any banks out there that work like
this. Additional things that a bank would have to worry about is when to
accumulate and/or pay interest, and when to cutoff transactions for an
account whose statement is cycling today. Seems to be that "batch
processes" would be required for both of those cases. Especially the
interest thing, because you essentially have to go through every single
account, even those that did not have any transactions today, and accrue
their interest (oh, and charge their fees! <G>).

It's not that I think such things are "impossible". More that they are
out
of the realm of my experience, and thus fraught with many unknowns.

It needs a slight change of concept.

A batch process is an accumulation of events that happened in the past. An
on-line process involves events happening now. (Usually in the form of
transactions)

Therefore, theoretically at least, a batch process can be removed if the
transactions happening "now" make provision for the things the Batch process
would have been run to find out. (Sorry, I know that sounds clumsy, but it
is the best I can do... :-))

Another way to look at it is that the batch process emulates a series of
events over time. Therefore, if those events provided what the batch process
is going to, as they happened, there would be no need for the batch process.

Because of the fundamental laws of arithmetic you can achieve the same
result with a series of individual accumulations as they occur, as you can
with a bunch of retrospective accumulations.

I have worked for a few major banks and I know of one that does online
accrual and interest calculation. (It's in London and is not a retail
bank). Interest on any account is available as it stands "now" without
running a batch process. Transactions affecting the balance automatically
post to the interest account so it is always up to date. Interest is
calculated on the days between the old and new balance at the time any
transaction on the account is run, and is accrued. (A transaction is run to
get the current interest and it does exactly the same calculation. The old
and new balance will be the same, but the dates between them will require
interest to be calculated to bring the interest up to date.) This stuff is
complex because of interest rate fluctuations (rates are held as a
"collection" ordered by date), but it can certainly be done.

Statements can also be built up on line with lines being added as
transactions occur. A "virtual image" of the statement is held until it is
requested or otherwise triggered by a statement date. My local bank here in
NZ offers online statements and I no longer get paper ones. I can request a
statement any time I want and it will reflect the state of my account as it
is "now" or between whatever dates I specify (up to about one year ago). The
information is presented immediately on request, via a Web Service, and
interest is calculated and shown for the period I requested the statement.
(Along with fees as you mentioned.)

Howard is right in that Data Warehousing can simply remove much of the need
for batch processing, with data cubes already providing consolidated and
accumulated pictures which are updated in real time, along with the
capability to drill down to detail right now, as the transaction runs.

Databases that have stored procedures triggered by transactions can fully
automate much of what would have required a batch process to extract.

I think batch processing will be with us for some time to come (mainly
because of what Michael observed: "That's the way we've always done it"),
and not because of any real need for it. As the new approaches and tools
become more firmly established, and the demand for information right "now"
increases, we will see diminishng dependency on it.

Pete.



.

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