[Year 12 SofDev] Data dictionary - data formats

[Andrew Shortell]

Mike
I admire your effort in checking this
I still actually believe that it would be more "efficient" to just store it
as text - no need for more formatting ....

I still admire the effort you have put in here

Cheers

Andrew


On 6/04/11 10:37 PM, "Mike Brookes" <mikebr at tpg.com.au> wrote:

> Hi Andrew,
> Yes if the merge field is given a custom format of 0000.
> Attachment contains a spreadsheet with some postcodes in col 1.
> the col2 duplicates col 1 and adds a custom format of 0000.
> The word doc is a label mailmerge to explore how M$ transfers numbers
> between apps - it seems that it doesn't transfer formats so that the
> mailmerge field must be formatted with 0000 to give the leading zero
> 
> Storing postcode as text might be easier but its still not as efficient.
> 
> Memory etc might be cheaper now but the first computer I built (EA's
> Miniscamp) had 128 bytes of memory. This does not necessarily mean that
> I'm fanatical about efficiency :-)
> 
> Mike
> 
> 
> On 6/04/2011 7:26 PM, Andrew Shortell wrote:
>> Hi Mike
>> Most "people" would merge it out from an excel file into say an address
>> label
>> Would microprice s/w print the leading zero when it comes from excel as a
>> number?
>> Would any other better written s/w print the leading zero?
>> 
>> Would it not be simpler to just treat it as text ...
>> 
>> 
>> You no doubt will remember when NT postcodes changed.. (It was when Oz post
>> wanted to introduce personalised postcodes for big companies in sydney and
>> melb - melb got the 8000s and sydeny got the 9000s) this occurred after ram
>> /hdd space became significantly cheaper and thus within the price point of a
>> public provider of services such as oz post
>> 
>> So originally they were all numeric which would have fitted with the whole
>> thought that they could be stored in less space... Now that restriction is
>> functionally irrelevant.
>> 
>> Andrew S
> 
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-- 
-- 
Andrew Shortell

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