background for my problem

[nkuipers]

>What this says to me is that you need to take the next step to turn
>this into an object-oriented application so you can encapsulate
>behaviour behind method calls.

YEESSS.  This is also the conclusion I have reached.  It's one reason why I am 
so interested in OO themes in the PM.  Or at least, I need to dump to a 
database on a per cluster basis and then use OO to access and manipulate the 
records for comparisons/calculations.  I think this is the best strategy since 
my existing software is not OO to this point but can easily be made to talk to 
a database.