Use a Master List

Owned by Former user (Deleted)
Last updated: Aug 31, 2022 by Fiona Sargeant (Unlicensed)
2 min read


About Master Lists

Lots of organisations do a lot of process work using some variation of what we call a master list. This is a bit like using an Excel spreadsheet that has a large number of rows and a large number of columns. The spreadsheet is passed around various people in the different departments so that people can:

  • either update data
  • or extract data to act on.

You can create a master list in PhixFlow.

Manage a Small Master List

Scenario

Implement an approval process for credits on invoices in PhixFlow, using a master list.

Solution:

  • Create a merge table to act as a master list, keyed off a unique identifier.
  • Create tables and/or file collectors to update the master list.
  • Create a pull pipe linking the master list table to itself, with its date offsets set to -1, -1.
  • Every time the table is run, the master list table is recreated from the previous version of itself and the updates that happen via other tables.

Manage a Large Master List

Scenario

A very large master list is periodically updated with a small create/update/delete feed. It is computationally expensive and time consuming to create a completely new master list table, when only (for example) 220 out of 150,000,000 records are actually updated.

Implement a master list in PhixFlow where the master list is very large, and the number of updates is tiny by comparison.

Solution:

  • Create the table to act as a master list keyed on a unique identifier.
  • Create tables and/or file collectors to update the master list.
  • Create secondary tables to pull data from the master listTable, along non-historied pipes.
  • Group non-historied pipes by the unique identifier.
  • Construct the attribute logic in those secondary tables can distinguish the correct data from all the records that share the unique identifier.