Calculation or Number

[Mark Appleby]

I have a dilemma. I have always been thought to show stock levels as a calculation. But I have a problem. I have a system that will not have a lot of quantities. In fact over half the items will be unique. That means that there will be only one item which will be put into stock then sold and that is the end of it. My question is, would I not be better off in this case to just have a stock quantity field that is updated. This will allow the system to work faster whenever those stock reports are needed. I reckon that there will be 50,000 records within a 24 month period. If I start putting in a movements file this will have at least double that because even for the unique item there will be a movement in and another out this will really slow things up for reporting purposes. I even recon that in browse view that there will be a time lag with this many records.

All comments are welcome.

[LiveOak]

When speed becomes a problem, many large inventory systems update a "working" number for inventory level each night from the actual transactions and use this as the inventory level the next day. There is probably little reason for one of a kind items sold three years ago to appear on inventory reports. It is also a bad idea to place calculated inventory levels on list views, this can get real slow.

-bd