Data Modeling › CA 2E Access Paths › Overview of Access Paths

Overview of Access Paths

The next stage in defining your design model is to define the required access paths. Access paths specify views of the files in the data model. The views define how data is to be presented to the functions. Functions specify the processes that operate on the data, see the chapter "Designing Functions" for more information.

Access paths control three different aspects of how data is presented to a function. An access path determines:

• Which fields will be available to the function
• Which records will be selected or omitted from the file (select/omit)
• The order in which records are presented (key sequence) to the function