Introduction

Introduction

This guide describes how to create and use dataviews using mainframe CA Ideal. Included are commands and functions specific to dataviews. For more information about descriptions and complete syntax of these functions and all CA Ideal commands, see the Command Reference Guide.

With Dataview Administration authorization level or higher, you can create or modify a database. All users can display a dataview.

Your View of Data

The CA Ideal user perceives the data as a named collection of columns or fields in a table. The applications developer can view each row or entry in this table as if it were a physical row or a record.

The following table represents data related to employees in an organization:

In the Program Definition Language (PDL), there are statements to process the data as if it were an actual collection of records with references made to any field by the name of that field. From the user's standpoint, you can find any row (record) or set of rows by using the PDL FOR statement in the procedure definition in the Command Reference Guide. For example, you can find the second row by using a FOR construct that contains the clause WHERE
EMP‑NO = '6322'. After you are positioned on a given row in the EMP‑HIST dataview, you can reference or update the values DOBBS and 6322 by specifying the column names LAST‑NAME and EMP‑NO, respectively. In reality, these fields could comprise an entire record of a table or they could be a set of noncontiguous fields.