MONTANA RIVERS INFORMATION SYSTEM 

 Rivers Report 



together, all of the records in Carbon County are grouped together, and 

 so on. During the search, the program moves quickly down to the 

 Missoula County group but then it must search every record in the group 

 (over 250 records) for the name 'Rattlesnake Creek'. 



To speed the retrieval, it is best to reduce the number of records the program 

 has to search. Frequently, this is accomplished most effectively by searching by 

 stream name with the stream name index activated. Option 1 is preferred for 

 this search. Therefore, leave the River Name index active. 



The rule of thumb in choosing the appropriate index is, if you are searching 

 primarily by one of the above menu items, then select that index. For instance, 

 if you are searching by Water Code, then activate the Water Code index. If you 

 are searching by Wildlife Area only, then activate that index, and so on. 



On the other hand, if you are searching by more than one of the above menu 

 items, e.g. River Name and County, then it is best to determine which of the 

 items (river name or county) is most restrictive. 



For example, the most restrictive parameter for a stream is the Water Code 

 because there is only one code for each stream. River name is also fairly 

 restrictive but frequently there will be more than one stream with the same name 

 (Rattlesnake Creek, Rock Creek, etc.). County is not very restrictive because 

 there will be many streams in a particular county. So if you are searching by 

 river name and county, river name is the more restrictive stream attribute and 

 is the best index to activate. 



REVIEWING YOUR SELECTIONS. From the opening screen, choose 

 'Display the report designed'. Figure 12 is the screen you will see. 



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