Generating the Number

Question

Hi
I want to generate a number for Vendor such that it is conactenation of the Region and a SequenceNumber.
Ex: For North & range 1-1000-----> N0001,N002....N0999
      For South & range 1-1000-----> S0001,S0002....S0999
Similarly for East and West E0001 & W0001.
Can anyone help me in this issue.
Regards
Nagalakshmi.

Answer 1

The short answer is you can technically achieve this by means of an assignment.  You would have an Auto ID field and a table that stores the different ranges.  You then sum the values of the auto ID field to the range (or concat, based on what field type you define). 
However, this may not be the best approach because then your number ranges are going to have gaps in them.  For example, if you have three ranges:
1000-1999
2000-2999
3000-3999
And you have one Auto ID field that increments every time you create a new record.  Your assignment will add the value of the auto id field to the range when you create a new record.  However, there is a problem that I will demonstrate below.
1.  You create the first record and it's supposed to use range number 1.  The number looks like this: 1001.
2.  You create a second record and it uses range number 2.  The number looks like this: 2002.
3.  You create a third record and it uses range number 3.  The number looks like this: 3003.
4.  You now create a fourth record using range number 1.  The number looks like this: 1004. 
As you can see there is a gap of three numbers between 1001 and 1004.  This is because the Auto ID field will increment regardless of what range you are using.  This is a problem if you design your ranges to be small, because you may run out of numbers.  If you are going to use this approach, then you should design your ranges to be very large.
Otherwise you need another approach.  At one of my clients we solved this problem by building a custom iView in the portals which used the Java API to generate the number.  We have three tables (account group, number range, number range map).  The range was dependant upon the account group that was selected.  Number range table stored all of the ranges.  And number range map allowed you to select an account group and the corresponding number range.  So when the user created a new record in the iView, our java api program would first lookup the number range mapping table and find out based on the account group which range to select from the range table (by using a key).  It would then go into the range table, increment the range value and then assign that value to the number field.
That's one way of doing it.  But honestly, I would recommend having your remote systems generate the number when MDM pushes the record out, and then interface the number back to MDM and store it in the key mappings.