Well, not really. I have done applications for one of the largest banks in the U.S., generating reports summarizing activity of commercial banking from the "banker" through seven levels of administration., with each level requiring the summation of currency values over the sub-groups. The reports were all "cross-footed" within the report and summary values (totals) validated aginst independent calculations done by other departments using other softeware / methods. We 'often' disagreed by a "few" pennies (I DO MEAN PENNIES) from totals in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, whithout ever resorting to any artificial rounding. I no loonger rember specific numbers of entites, but there were many thousand individual bankers reporting through approx 1300 "branches".
You can readily understand that the banking industry does not regard the processing ov "invntory" as a casual exercise. I have had individual bankers several states removed from my location seek me out to get an "expliniation" (read chew on me) for a difference of $0.03 in their booking activity.
So, again, I do not really "understand" the issue. It may be (is?) necessary to be careful in how calculations are done, but this is more a matter of accounting rules than data base / program design. In many businesses, there is an accounting department. It usually has a standard set of accounting rules & practices for the firm. These rules tell you (anyone) exactly how to do a specific calculation. Get teh rules. Follow them. Refer questions re the results to the accounting department. This MAY include you (your department) - or it may not. Doesn't matter. If you have followed the departmant practices / guidelines it is THEIR issue, not yours. When I did the banking thing, the only question I ever had to answer came from accounting, it did NOT concern the ammount, but where I got the "rules". All other questions were simply frwarded to them (accounting). Accounting DID correct me on occassion. MOtly, the corrections regarded changes in the rules (which I belatedly found happened sporadically - and often not through the banks' choice). It "appears" that banks (and most large businesses) generally follow a specific "Accounting Practice" (which has a name) and the Federal Gov. often issues "clarifications" to the various nammed practices. Many businesses subscribe to various publications which keep track of the rules and issue any changes to the subscribers through formal corresponeance. The businesses then review their specific implementation and decide if a process or calculation needs to be chaged. If it decides to implement the change, some have an internal distribution to notify individuals and groups of the change. This is where I "got caught", as I did nnot know of or subscribe to this distribution - but just used a copy I found on the internal network. Eventually (six weeks), A rule changed, I did NOT change the calculation, the BANKER checked my result aginst his expectation, found the discrepancy --- BANG! Accounting said it was a "Minor" error and was 'happy' to include me in the distribution of the rule changes. My immediate boss was only mildly "upset" - it "only" rquired re-doing a 7,000 page report - but that was after the entire report was run through a V&V type test.
Hmmmmmmmmmm, LOTS more than you wanted to know?
MichaelRed
redmsp@erols.com
There is never time to do it right but there is always time to do it over