Creating Dataviews for CA Datacom/DB Native Command Access › Rules for CA Datacom/DB Native Command Access › Cataloging the Dataview › Optional FIELD Attributes

Optional FIELD Attributes

CA Ideal recognizes the following considerations for optional FIELD attributes:

• SEMANTIC‑TYPE Entered for date fields only. Enter a SEMANTIC‑TYPE of CA‑DATE for a numeric field (TYPE=N, D, or B) that contains an internal date stored as the number of days since (positive number) or preceding (negative number) the date December 31, 1900. A five‑digit number can contain values from ‑99,999 through 99,999, or the equivalent of almost 274 years before and after the base date. This would be from approximately the year 1627 to approximately the year 2175. A six‑digit number can represent dates approximately 2740 years before and after the base date, and so on. (CA Datacom/DB native access)
  A SEMANTIC-TYPE of SQL-DATE may be present for a field (column) that was created via SQL. CA Ideal will process the binary format held on the database and present the same character string format as would be provided with SQL access to the same data. The same applies to the SQL-TIME and SQL-TIMESTAMP types.
• NULL-INDICATOR may be "Y" for fields defined as SQL columns. CA Ideal will handle these fields in the same way for native access as it does for SQL access.
• DECIMALS The total number of decimal (fractional) places in the number. CA Ideal determines the number of integer places by calculating the total number of decimal (base 10) digits that fit in the field (based on the TYPE) and subtracting the DECIMALS value.
• DEPENDING‑ON The name of a non‑occurring simple numeric field with DECIMALS=0 precedes this field in the record. The CA Ideal restriction is that a field with a DEP‑ON clause can be a simple or compound field, but must not be followed in the dataview by any other fields (unless they are subordinate fields to a compound field).
  • EDIT‑PATTERN A COBOL‑like edit pattern used when displaying or printing the field. The CA Ideal Report Definition Facility and the CA Ideal Panel Definition Facility use this pattern as the default for the field. If you omit this edit pattern, the following default edit pattern is used:
  • X(n) Alphanumeric fields (where n is the length)
  • 9(i).(9d) Numeric fields (where i = integers, d = decimals)
• HEADING‑1 and HEADING‑2 One or two literals (without quotes) used as the default column headings for the CA Ideal Report Definition Facility and for dynamic field definition using the CA Ideal Panel Definition Facility. For example, if ACCOUNT is specified as the value for HEADING‑1 and NUMBER is specified as the value for HEADING‑2, the column header appears as follows:

  ACCOUNT NUMBER

• SIGN N to force “unsigned” (the default for numeric fields is Y).
• VALUE For numeric fields, a valid numeric literal, or one of: ZERO, ZEROS, ZEROES.

  For alphanumeric fields, enter the characters to appear as the initial value without quotes (or any other delimiter) or enter one of: SPACE or SPACES.

  For a field with CLASS=V (value or condition‑name in CA Ideal), you must type at least one non‑blank character for VALUE. If the condition‑name corresponds to a value of spaces, type the word SPACE or SPACES.

  If a value contains embedded blanks, type in the value with no delimiters. For example, enter a three‑character value “A B” as A in position 1, blank in position 2, B in position 3.

CA Ideal does not support any of the following:

• Multiple values for a single condition‑name.
• A range of values for a field, either in the VALUE attribute or the LOW‑RANGE and HIGH‑RANGE attributes.
• COBOL figurative constants:
  • HIGH‑VALUE(S)
  • LOW‑VALUE(S)
  • QUOTE
  • ALL literal