Tracking Prime Interest Rates

[Frosty the Coder]

List,

The financial users asked me how to track
prime interest rates (in this case, US prime).

They'd like to see them historically.

I suggested using a statistical ledger,
but am looking for other suggestions as well.

Who among you have tracked interest rates?
How did you accomplish it?

TIA

Gene

Gene Piekarski, Jr

AS/400, B733, SP11.2, NT client
AS/400, B733, SP14, W2000 client
XE, SP15.1

 

[Larry_Jones]

Spreadsheet and a newspaper

Larry Jones
[email protected]
OneWorld XE, SP 15.1
HPUX 11, Oracle SE 8.1.6
Mfg, Distribution, Financials

 

[david_mallory]

Gene,

I think that where and how you store and display the interest rate data
depends on what the user wants to do with the data. I would ask them what
they want to do.

If they just want data on interest rates, I suggest they just go to a web
site ( nfsn.com/library/prime.htm#chart,
stls.frb.org/fred/data/iupdate.html,
briefing.com/FreeServices/mtgdata/prm.htm,
federalreserve.gov/releases/H15/update/ ) and get the data.

If they want to store the data and call it up and look at it, I suggest it
is not worth the front-end work and maintenance to do it in One World. They
could import it to Excel or Access. But still they can go to one of the
above web sites, or many others, and get all the history they want, any
time. No overhead.

If they want to plug it into some calculation in One World, I would ask in
what OW module they will use it, and how.

If it is related to some transaction they are making, and they want the rate
integrated into the transaction, and they would key the appropriate rate at
transaction time, the OW table involved with the transaction may have a
spare field (user defined, or reference), which could be added to the screen
they use to create the transaction, so they could enter the rate as part of
the transaction, and then the business function could be modified to include
the rate field as needed. Lots of work, and maintenance at upgrade time.

Dave Mallory Denver Water 7.332 SP 15.1 Oracle 8.1722 NT 4.0