IBM i General Design Standards › Design Standards for Database Files › Considerations for Database File Design › Categories of Database File › Transaction Summary Files

Transaction Summary Files

Transaction summary files contain summaries of the transaction files.

Introduce summary files to provide summary totals of transactions for rapid interrogation, for example customer’s aged debt, and stock levels. They impose an overhead on processing, and may restrict interrogation possibilities if no supporting detail is maintained.

Introduce summary files only when space or response considerations mitigate against maintaining and interrogating open item transaction files.

Try to design summary files so that they can be rebuilt from the transaction files in the event of an error or a crash.