Functional Characteristics › Use of the Glossary › Record Type Qualification

Record Type Qualification

Certain product glossaries may describe records of only one type. These have fixed field references. Field names in such glossaries are unqualified, as each field is defined in every record of the file.

Glossaries that describe multiple record type files contain field names with record type prefixes. In such files, each record consists of two portions:

• a common portion that contains constant data, including a record type descriptor, and
• a variable portion whose contents depend solely upon the record type descriptor in the fixed portion.

All data field names in the common portion are unqualified by record type as they are defined in every record of the file. However, all data field names in the variable portion must be prefixed by the record type in order to indicate in which record types the field exists.

Example:

E.CPU TIME references the field CPU TIME in the E-type record
L.CPU TIME references the field CPU TIME in the L-type record

Note: The same field can exist in more than one type of record. CA JARS Wizard automatically separates these references as long as they are correctly prefixed with the record type.

Because the O prefix is used to denote output glossary fields, (refer to the description of the OUTPUT statement in Chapter 3), no glossary contains O-type records.