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

PARMS Statement

This statement, identified by the statement type PARMS, is optional. The PARMS statement provides a means to specify optional parameters to the Report Writer during execution.

The date format indicator defines the date format on all report control statements. The three date fields on the PARMS statement are used as the header dates for all reports generated in a given run. The date fields are alphanumeric and will not be edited by the Report Writer. They have no relationship to the selection or rejection of input accounting records. This function is controlled by the CRITERIA statement.

If omitted, the Report Begin Date defaults to the lower limit date criteria as defined on the CRITERIA statement (if present). Similarly, the Report End Date assumes the upper limit date criteria value on the CRITERIA statement. In the absence of a CRITERIA statement, the begin and end dates will be filled by the earliest and latest input record dates encountered. If omitted, the Report Run Date is filled with the current system date.

Nonblank date fields on the PARMS statement override the defaults and are moved to their respective positions in the heading information for each report generated in a given run.

The operating cost field may be used to introduce the total EDP cost for an installation for a given time period. This value is then used to compute the distributed charge amount available for display by the user. For example, if the total EDP cost for an installation is $60,000 for a given period of time, then all computer users for that period should theoretically account for this amount on a pro rata basis. If a certain customer or inhouse department used 10 percent of the total computer effort, then they should account for $6,000 toward the EDP budget. Note that this is the distributed charge based on resources used versus the EDP cost, not the total charge based on resources used versus a billing algorithm.

The account exit name is an eight-character field identifying an exit routine to be given control each time a record is about to be written to the account file. For details regarding exit routines, see the User Exit Routines section of this chapter.

The max line count field can be used to adjust the maximum number of lines to be printed per page of output. A two-digit numeric value overrides the default value of 60 lines per page.

The control card print flag can be used to suppress the printing of report level control statements. This feature is provided so that production runs that use many user-supplied statements do not have to list the control statements.

The dollar sign print flag provides you with the option of producing financial reports with or without the dollar sign ($) appearing in charge related output data elements. This is particularly useful for installations using a print chain with a limited number of dollar sign characters. The print rate can be increased considerably by avoiding the printing of special characters. The default is to force the use of dollar signs where appropriate.

The sort core size field can be used to define to the Report Writer the amount of main storage to be used by the sorting operation. A three-digit numeric value represents the amount of storage in 1K byte increments that overrides the default value of 64K.

The sort message indicator can be used to cause the sort/merge program to display messages to the printer via the parameter MSG=AP. The default for this parameter is MSG=CP, specifying that only critical messages are to be printed.