Control Statements and Tables › CA JARS Control Statements › GROUP Statement

GROUP Statement

The GROUP statement is optional. It is used in conjunction with GROUPC statements 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 may be employed at the user's 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 typically 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 groups can be defined on the GROUP statement to describe six different levels of tests. Each group is defined 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 specifying the data format of the field in the Basic Accounting Table being used as the qualifier for the grouping feature. Specify a blank in this position for EBCDIC, a P for packed decimal, or an X for binary or the hexadecimal portion of a packed decimal field.

i

is a one-character code specifying whether qualified records should be selected or rejected. Specify an S in this position to cause all identified record groups to be selected for further processing and all unidentified record groups to be automatically rejected. Specify an R to cause the reverse effect to allow you to reject identified record groups. If the position 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.