Is there any white paper or any other readily available publication that discusses and proposes guidelines for Natural Programming Best Practices?
Regards
Itsik
Not really. Why? It would not be a simple “white paper”, it would be a stack of white paper, possibly a meter or more in height.
Consider a couple of simple examples. Some very large percentage of Adabas/Natural shops simply ban the use of the SORTED BY clause for a FIND. Like most features, this one has specific uses. However, in order to understand the uses, a person must understand how Adabas works; what an ISN is, what the default sequence of an ISN list is, the relationship between ISN file organization, the “cost” of calls to Adabas, the cost of physical I/O, etc.
Non inverted descriptors are another facility that is often not used. Here, in addition to being banned, one finds that a very large percentage of Natural programmers do not even know about the availability of such a facility. Again, the proper use of this facility requires understanding of Natural’s FIND statement, and the underlying Adabas commands. One should also understand the overhead of Adabas calls and the cost of I/O (as above for SORTED BY).
In both cases, one should also understand alternatives (e.g. MultiFetch).
The answer to your question, in some sense, is simple, namely Education. Too many shops do not provide formal Natural training, do not make available publications like WHO’s Adabas & Natural series, my own Inside Natural and Simply Natural (end of commercial) to their staff. Without education and knowledge, white papers are wholly inadequate for providing programming guidelines.
steve
I leave you alone for almost 10 years, and you’re still talking about FIND SORTED BY 
How you doin Steve? Was just doing a search for some stuff and came across this board. Are there any of my other old SAG buddies out there? Hope all’s well in SAG land.
Steve Roddel