Anders,
Thank you for your reply.
Your answer is what I needed. Two TCursors on the same table. I'll have to
create the index in OPAL because the table on which I will work is the
result of a query (To get the proper data I query two tables and use the
answer table. This happens at the beginning and is the only query in the
scenario).
I will work on this in the next few days (during my copious free time) and
see if I can do it.
Craig
"Anders Jonsson" <gt3TakeThisAway (AT) bredband (DOT) net> wrote

Craig,

Make a secondary index on the main table with Patient Number and Admission
DateTime. Add a field called "Last Discharge DateTime" to the table. Add a
second field called "Elapsed Hours".

Query the table to generate a unique set of Patient Numbers. Use a tcursor
to scan this table of Patient Numbers.

Set up a second tcursor on your main table. Using tcursor #1, use set range
to isolate Patient Number. Use tcursor #2 to scan the resulting set of
records and fill/calculate in the "Last Discharge DateTime" and "Elapsed
Hours" fields. Come back to the newsgroup if you need help calculating
Elapsed Hours.

Finally, query the main table for Elapsed Hours less than target value
(e.g., 48 hours) to generate those instances in which the patient bounced
back.

Time to write the code and run it should be less than 15 minutes.

Jean

"Craig" <craig.futterman (AT) nospam (DOT) comcast.net> wrote