From: mcstockspamplug@spamdamenquery.com   
      
   don't think in terms of 3GL programming....   
      
   if you need to make the calculation for 1 or 5,000 different rows, simply   
   join in the correct row from your mortality table, ie:   
      
   select p.name, p.age, p.age * m.factor   
   from   
       person p   
   ,  mortality_chart m   
   where   
      p.something =    
   and   
      p.age = m.age   
      
   likely you'll index the AGE column in your mortality_chart table   
      
   let Oracle handle the caching of data from the lookup table -- that's its   
   job   
      
      
   on the other hand, if you really, need an in-memory structure for your   
   mortality table, you can populate a PL/SQL collection with the values --   
   either from a table or just coded in your PL/SQL package -- and use the age   
   as an index   
      
   give some more details on how you're processing your 5,000 mortals   
      
   -- mcs   
      
   "Jaime Stuardo"  wrote in message   
   news:3fbd472e_1@nova.entelchile.net...   
   | Hi all...   
   |   
   | I have a table that will never change. Specifically it's a mortality chart   
   | that I need to use to make some calculations. One column of the table is   
   the   
   | age of the person, and other column is the factor to apply to the   
   | calculation.   
   |   
   | Suppose the calculation need to be made for 5000 people. It's inadmissible   
   | to make 5000 SELECT's to get the factor for each person. That calculation   
   | isn't done for only one group of persons, but for a lot of groups. So the   
   | solution is to place all that data in memory, in ascending order, so that   
   | the age will be the index to that memory table and the factor will be the   
   | data stored in that memory location.   
   |   
   | I want to be able to do something like this   
   |   
   | VALUE := 0;   
   | FOR I IN 1..NUM_PERSON LOOP   
   |     VALUE := VALUE + TABLE_IN_MEMORY( AGE( I ) ) * SOME_OTHER_NUMBER;   
   | END LOOP;   
   |   
   |   
   | Is it clear what the problem is?  Any help will be greatly appreciated   
   |   
   | Thanks a lot in advance   
   | Jaime   
   |   
   |   
   |   
   |   
      
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