GROUP Statement

The VM Interface › Reporting Component › Report Control Statements › GROUP Statement

GROUP Statement

Position	Field Length	Field Name	Notes

1	1	Set Code	Required
2-9	8	Statement Type	GROUP
10-15 16-21 22-27 28-33 34-39 40-45	6 6 6 6 6 6	Group 1 Definition Group 2 Definition Group 3 Definition Group 4 Definition Group 5 Definition Group 6 Definition	where: ppplfi ppp: beginning portion of selected field* l: length of selected field (maximum of 8) f: format of selected field : character p: packed decimal X: hexadecimal (binary) i: Selection Indicator : select all records S: select qualified records R: reject qualified records
46-80	35	Reserved	Not used
Selected Field Length cannot be greater than 4 if either P or X is used as Format Indicator. * Refer to the VM Basic Accounting Table

This statement, identified by the statement type GROUP, is optional. The GROUP statement in conjunction with GROUPC statements provides you with a mechanism to identify or qualify accounting records based on values in defined positions of the record. Once an accounting record has been qualified, the following functions can be employed at your option:

select or reject the record for further processing
assign the record a unique group code that can subsequently be used as a sort control field
assign the record a unique CPU Identification code in order that a specific billing algorithm can be applied

The Grouping feature can be used to:

expand criteria base for record selection/rejection
summarize records that do not have common characteristics
apply different billing algorithms to selected accounts
report on and charge users according to shift differentials

Six different levels of tests can be defined on the GROUP statement in the format ppplfi, where:

ppp

is a three-digit number defining the starting position (character) in the Basic Accounting Table used to set up a qualifier for the grouping feature.

l

is a one-digit number defining the number of characters (beginning with and including the starting position) in the Basic Accounting Table used to construct the length of the qualifier for the grouping feature.

f

is a one-character code indicating the data format of the field in the Basic Accounting Table being used as the qualifier for the grouping feature.

A blank format indicator is used for EBCDIC, a P for packed decimal, and an X for binary or the hexadecimal portion of a packed decimal field.

i

is a one-character code indicating whether qualified records should be selected or rejected.

An S causes all identified record groups to be selected for further processing and all unidentified record groups to be automatically rejected. An R causes the reverse effect to allow the user to reject identified record groups.

If the indicator is left blank, no record rejection occurs and all record groups are selected for further processing. This is particularly useful when all records are to be grouped for display purposes without dropping any information, as in computer time shift reporting.

The process of identifying records starts with the Group One Definition. If the record is qualified and selected, the process continues to the Group Two Definition and so on to the Group Six Definition in a similar manner. If a record is selected based on all definitions, then the record is considered selected for further processing. If a record is rejected based on any single definition, then the record is considered rejected from further processing.