7. Writing Field-developed Applications › 7.5 MSI Definition Notes › 7.5.9 Data Dictionary Aliases

7.5.9 Data Dictionary Aliases

When defining a standard FDA, all non-common data elements
must start with the file id (or the parallel file id).  For
FDAs that use the CA MICS-SAS Interface (MSI), this rule has
been lifted since the input SAS data set can contain
variables of any name.  This can potentially lead to the Data
Dictionary Entry for an existing CA MICS data element to be
overlaid with the information for a 'new' data element.  For
example, an MSI FDA that contains a data element called
CPUBUSY would conflict with the existing CA MICS data element
CPUBUSY from the HARCPU file.

To avoid this situation, the CA MICS Component Generator
(MCG) will automatically generate Data Dictionary Aliases for
any file that uses the CA MICS-SAS Interface.  These alias
names have the form fffnnnnn, where fff is the file id, and
nnnnn is a unique number generated by the MCG.  This
generated alias is used except when the data element already
exists in the CA MICS File Definition Table (FDT).  In this
case, the alias entry in the FDT is used.

The MCG Alias statement can be used to reassign the alias
name for ANY data element, and will override any
automatically generated names.  Note that the ALIAS statement
has an alternate form, that can only be used with MSI (refer
to section 4.2.4.3.6.5 in this guide).