Hello Folks,

I have to implement a few changes and I am considering making the changes to a synonym.

To be a little more specific, I need to add a column that creates a grouping. If the time (gotten from another field) is from midnight to 6am, then it gets the value 'Night'; 6am to noon gets 'Morning' etc.

The best way (imo) is to put this calculation in the ETL and spit out a new field to the data warehouse, but that's something I will not be able to do right now. And I would rather not put it into fex files because its something I have to do often, but not in every fex either.

So here is my question... if I create a defined field in a synonym, will the calculation for this field still be done if that defined field is not being used in that fex? I would hope not so that the query runs faster.

Thank you Folks,

This message has been edited. Last edited by: FP Mod Chuck,

I do believe that a DEFINE'd field is only evaluated if it is referenced withing the DEFINE FILE..., TABLE FILE... requested. So, it should not be a hindrance to, negatively affect, your query / processing...

Ditto with Doug

Doug is correct.

This is a great strategy by the way. I have a bunch of categories defined in master files, ones where my client seems to want to move things around a bit. Having the define in a single centralized location makes adjustments easy.

But -- you can't put an index on a field that doesn't exist, so there are limitations.