Re: Flat Query
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 18:36:56 GMT
Message-ID: <cVS3f.14882$q1.767_at_newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net>
"Mark D Powell" <Mark.Powell_at_eds.com> wrote in message
news:1129305322.558224.22640_at_z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> The term 'flat file' has been in use for more than 20 years. It was
> generally applied to files accessed in a sequential manner as opposed
> to being accessed via direct access or ISAM, Indexed Sequential Acess
> Method, files. Over time, especially, in the non-mainframe world the
> term was usually used a synonym for a text file.
>
> In the database world the term usually refers to OS files that are used
> to feed data to a load process or hold the results of an extract
> process. In other words, ETL, operations.
>
> HTH -- Mark D Powell --
>
Actually if you go back 25 years or more, the term referred to files that
not only were processed sequentially, but also
that did not contain records within records, or records grouped into record
groups.
Received on Fri Oct 14 2005 - 20:36:56 CEST