Creating a Physical Table

Pension Administration provides several tables you might incorporate into a table lookup, including the Taxable Wage Base table, 415 Limits tables, and some interest rate tables. You may want to create other tables, as well, for plan factors, interest rates, or other information.

You use Application Designer to create any custom user tables. You can also use Application Designer to create a page to maintain the data. If you do not create a page for your table, you have to enter the data using SQL.

As you create tables to be used by the table lookup utility, consider the following restrictions:

• The names of tables created by using Application Designer have the PS_ prefix. The names of tables not created by using Application Designer must begin with the PA_TL_ prefix.

• The first column must be an effective date field. Although many tables have only one effective date (with new data always being added under the same effective date), the field is still expected.

• The second column name must be TL_SEQ_NUM. This column contains sequencing information for the table and must be a key for the table.

• The next column or columns must contain the lookup basis. One-dimensional lookups use one column for the lookup basis; two-dimensional lookups use two columns for the lookup bases.

• The final column must have the result value.

• All numerics must be set up as decimals.

The sequence number controls the order in which the table rows are read into the program. For example, a taxable wage base table might look like this:

If instead this table used sequence number 15 for 1931 and 10 for 1932, the table lookup might give unexpected results.

A two-dimensional table has two lookup bases. You can picture it as a grid. For example, you could use the following grid to look up information based on both age and service:

You create two-dimensional tables with two columns of lookup values: lookup one and lookup two. Set up the table with all rows for the first lookup one value, all rows with the next lookup one value, and so on.

For example, a two-dimensional lookup table is shown below. Lookup one is age, and lookup two is service. Following the example shown above, the lookup one values are set up as follows: all the service values for age 55, all values for age 60, then all values for age 65. The final table would look like this:

When you set up instructions for looking up data on a table, you specify an interpolation method for handling values that are not on the table. When you deal with intermediate values, the instructions depend on how you set up the data.

Suppose you look up social security retirement age based on an employee's date of birth. The following example shows a table you could use to determine SSRA when adjusting 415 limits, but not for social security calculations:

When you enter data in the table, you can only have one birth date per row. You cannot use a range such as "1937 and earlier." However, you do not want to enter every possible birth date in the range.

Assume that your interpolation method tells the system to use the next lower value on the table for intermediate birth dates. You can also have the system use the smallest and largest values on the table as the minimum and maximum. Based on these options, you would set up the table as follows:

When you use the lower value, birth dates between January 1, 1938 and December 31, 1954 use the value for January 1, 1938.

If your interpolation method specifies that the system should use the next higher value for intermediate birth dates, your table would be as follows:

When you use the higher value, birth dates between January 1, 1938 and December 31, 1954 use the value for December 31, 1954.