General DDDL Syntax Options › Documenting Entity Occurrences › DESCRIPTION Clause

DESCRIPTION Clause

The DESCRIPTION clause associates up to one line of documentation text with an entity occurrence. Typically, descriptions clarify entity-occurrence identifications or briefly explain the expected use of an entity. This clause functions as follows:

• In an ADD statement, DESCRIPTION establishes a user-specified description for the entity occurrence.
• In a MODIFY or REPLACE statement, DESCRIPTION replaces an existing description in its entirety, or, if no description exists, establishes the specified description.

Syntax: DESCRIPTION Clause

►►─┬────────────────────┬─ DEScription is description-text ───────────────────►◄
   └─ entity-type-name ─┘

Parameters

entity-type-name

Identifies the entity type with which the description is being associated. If specified, entity-type-name must be a standard IDD entity type.

DEScription is description-text

Assigns 1 through 40 (64, with element occurrences) characters of description text to the requested entity occurrence. Description-text must be coded on one line and, if the text contains embedded blanks or delimiters, must be enclosed in site-standard quote characters. To remove existing description text, specify a null string ('').

Examples

The following examples illustrate the use of the DESCRIPTION clause.

The following clause associates documentation text with the FILE occurrence named BILLING.

add file billing
     description is 'outstanding accounts receivable'.

The following clause nullifies an existing DESCRIPTION clause.

modify system payroll
     system description is ''.