Another tool that is useful for progress tracking is the DIALOG function. DIALOG is usually set up to display a window with a small number of variable values. As processing progresses, the values are displayed in real time. The following are a few ways we can use this:
- Simply tracking progress of processing through a volume of data. This is the same reason we would provide a DIALOG display for the benefit of the user. The act of displaying slows down processing somewhat, so we may want to update the DIALOG display occasionally, not on every record.
- Displaying indicators when processing reaches certain stages. This can be used as a very basic trace with the indicators showing the path taken, so we may gauge the relative speed of progress through several steps.
- We might have a six-step process to analyze. We could define six tracking variables and display all of them in the DIALOG. We would initialize each variable with values dependent on what we are tracking, such...
