[REBOL] Re: Browsers ,vim Vs. Emacs etc....
From: petr:krenzelok:trz:cz at: 18-Mar-2002 6:23
Joel Neely wrote:
>Hi, Petr,
>
>Petr Krenzelok wrote:
>
>>Hmm, what is the problem? :-) I did some work here. We use CICS
>>systems in our company (till we move fully to SAP R3). Guys
>>prepare download/job for us... The record has fixed length
>>field structure and that is important...
>>
>>Well, I either don't understand the problem correctly, or I just
>>can find out, why to call such trivial task being an AI issue :-)
>>
>
>I wasn't thinking about the cases when I'm handed a fixed-record
>data file with documentation of the field layouts, nor the cases
>in which someone else has done the work to format/download the
>data for me. (I wish life were always that simple...)
>
>I'm thinking of those times when I've had the fun of figuring out
>the data layout for myself after being handed a file without the
>necessary documentation, for a variety of reasons:
>
>- there's no documentation nor source code for the creation of
> the file,
>
>- it was data extracted from a proprietary package from a defunct
> vendor,
>
>- the file was custom-constructed by someone who has since left
> the company, the city, the country, and (possibly) this earth;
>
:-)) ... or the file comes from some UFO? ;-) Well, generally speaking -
it is a bad situation, if you have to analyse some data with zero level
info ...
>- etc...
>
>The reason I refer to the task as AI-like is that a human being,
>especially one who knows the problem domain, can often make good
>guesses/inferences about field positions/locations based on such
>things as common encoded data, familiar items (e.g. dates, times,
>employee or account numbers, monetary figures, etc.) However,
>such inferences/guesses are often context sensitive and subject
>to change as more data become available.
>
Yes. I am not sure some kind of AI based automat can sort it out
properly. I too, ended in situation when I obtained mainframe csv file,
not knowing the structure. We did it manually that way - we started to
define .dbf file, guessing what the structure could be. What helped us
was, we knew what some data mean/represent (e.g. recognising customer
name, contract description, etc.) ...
So, I can leave this thread, as I have really no knowledge of how to
build the system you described. I have even never seen something along
the lines of AI automat digging into some data ....
-pekr-
