Deep Structures in container

[Kjetil Kilhavn]

 Tirsdag 19. april 2011 18.59.07 skrev Mike Pokraka :
> Hi Mark,
> 
> Technically it's possible - if not ideal- but practically I don't see the
> value in it. There are plenty of alternatives to prevent a material from
> being used during creation. Plant/Material status fields are easy
> candidates. The advantage of doing it all directly on the material is that
> you have the entire history of who added what and when as opposed to a big
> pile of data created by a system user.
I couldn't agree more. The value of change logs is often not seen until a 
question comes from senior management who demands to know who made or changed 
a document and you're not able to answer the question because change logs have 
been falsified (UPDATE cdhdr, I have only seen this once luckily) or are not 
used as pointed out by Mike.

The only time I have seen a value in storing much data in the container is 
when the data can be changed and the user must see the data exactly as they 
were when the workflow was started. This is rarely a requirement from the 
customer, but it has occurred in one case (during my 10 years).

> More importantly, as you are already aware materials are complex, and
> you're throwing any config-based validations and consistency controls out
> of the window when you create a temporary storage concept. You either need
> to duplicate this in all your input dialogs, or are headed for some
> serious exception handling at posting stage.
Or quite simple, but very user-hostile exception handling, as in: the update 
failed - please start over from scratch :-)
-- 
Kjetil Kilhavn (+47 40220607)
Blue Consulting AS (http://www.bluec.no)