Overview of Profile Parameters

This document provides information on the profile parameters that can be set in the NATPARM parameter file (or an alternative parameter file).

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The individual parameters are divided into the following parameter groups according to their functions.

• Database Management

• Natural Execution Configuration

• Natural Development Environment

• Product Configuration

• Client/Server

This section lists all parameters that can be set with the Configuration Utility. However, if you are not an administrator, not all of these parameters are displayed. Some parameters can only be seen and thus set by users who are defined as administrators (see also Administrator Assignments in the local configuration file).

For a full description of all available profile parameters, see the Parameter Reference or follow the links provided in this section.

Database Management

This parameter group contains the following categories:

• General Parameters

• Adabas Specific

• Administrator DBMS Assignment

• User DBMS Assignment

See also: Database Management System Assignments in the global configuration file.

General Parameters

The following profile parameters apply to the supported database management systems.

Adabas Specific

If Natural is used with Adabas, review the following profile parameters and, if necessary, adjust the default values to meet your specific requirements.

Administrator DBMS Assignment

The following profile parameters are used to assign administrator-specific database management system settings.

User DBMS Assignment

The following profile parameters are used to assign user-specific database management system settings.

Natural Execution Configuration

This parameter group contains the following categories:

• Batch Mode

• Buffer Sizes

• Character Assignments

• Command Execution

• Date Representation

• Device/Report Assignments

• Error Handling

• Field Appearance

• Limits

• Program Loading and Deletion

• Regional Settings

• Report Parameters

• Steplibs

• System Files

• System Variables

• Work Files

Batch Mode

The profile parameters which affect the batch mode behavior of Natural are arranged on the following pages:

• Channels
• Appearance
• Frame Characters

See also Natural in Batch Mode in the Operations documentation.

Channels

Appearance

Frame Characters

Buffer Sizes

Natural uses several buffer areas for the storage of programs and data. You may need to adjust their sizes in order to achieve maximum buffer efficiency.

See also Buffer Pool Assignments in the local configuration file.

Character Assignments

The following profile parameters are used to change default character assignments.

Once a character has been defined to replace a default character, this character cannot be used as data.

Command Execution

The following profile parameters are used to control the execution of commands.

Date Representation

The following profile parameters are used to control the representation of dates.

Device/Report Assignments

These parameters are used to modify your screen and printer configurations as well as your report assignments.

See also the profile parameter CMPRTnn which is used for additional reports in batch mode.

Device Assignments

The device assignments are shown in a scrollable list of configurable logical devices (VIDEO and the logical printers LPT1 to LPT31) as used in the DEFINE PRINTER statement. The following information can be changed:

Close mode

You can select a different close mode for each logical printer. Possible values are:

Close Mode	Description
Auto	Printers are automatically closed at the end of a program or when the execution of a called method is terminated. This is the default setting.
User	Closing of printers is controlled by the user. The printer is closed, if one of the following conditions is met: a CLOSE PRINTER statement is executed, a DEFINE PRINTER statement is executed, the session terminates.

Notes:

1. Instead of using the device TRANSFER, it is recommended to use a logical printer device (one of LPT1 to LPT31) where the device destination of the physical output device has been set to the value "E" (send data to an Entire Connection terminal). See also Defining Printers in the Natural Connection documentation.
2. If the device TRANSFER is used in the report assignments, the close mode for this device is determined as follows: The report number to which the device TRANSFER has been allocated is used as the device number (for example, for report number 2 the device LPT2 is used). The close mode that is defined for this device is also used as the close mode setting for the device TRANSFER.

The following program example describes the user-controlled closing of printers. Note that the close mode must be first set in the parameter file.

DEFINE DATA
  LOCAL
  1 #OUT (A8)
END-DEFINE
*
#OUT := *PROGRAM
*
* Write to report with close mode "user"
WRITE (1) 'OUTPUT PROGRAM: ' #OUT
*
* Write to report with close mode "auto"
WRITE (2) 'OUTPUT PROGRAM: ' #OUT
*
* Close printer 1
* Printer 1 is user-controlled
CLOSE PRINTER (1)
*
END

Line Size

See the description of the LS parameter.

Page Size

See the description of the PS parameter.

Max. Pages

See the description of the MP parameter.

Physical Output Device

The path and/or name of the program, script (including any arguments) or file that should receive the print data. Programs and scripts can read the incoming print data via stdin.

For example, you can specify the standard print command of your printer spooler with all options as described below.

• For UNIX System V:

  lp options

• For BSD-UNIX:

  lpr options

Line size, page size and maximum page number should be compatible with your hardware printer assignments.

Device Destination

Determines how Natural should interpret the information in the Physical Output Device field.

Option	Description
F	If "F" is specified, this is assumed to be a file specification.
D	If "D" is specified, this is assumed to be a command or script.
E	If "E" is specified, all data that are written to this logical printer are sent to an Entire Connection terminal. That is: output data which normally appear on the screen are written into an NCD file. See also Defining Printers in the Natural Connection documentation.

Note:
The following applies to the Physical Output Device field if the Device Destination field has been set to "F". As with work files, a file name can be defined by using environment variables. Any existing file of the same name at the specified location is normally overwritten, unless the entered file name is immediately prefixed by two right angle bracket characters (>>).

Report Assignments

The report assignments are shown in a scrollable list in which you can assign a Natural report number (report 1 to report 31) to a logical device name. The following information can be changed:

Override default report number

See the Parameter Reference for a description of the profile parameter MAINPR.

Device

For each report number, you can select another output medium. Possible values are (you can also press PF2 to select one of these values):

Value	Description
LPT1 to LPT31	Outputs the report data to the corresponding physical device (see the Physical Output Device field in the device assignments).
SOURCE	Outputs the report data to the source area. The user can then, for example, issue the EDIT command to open the output data in the editor and save it accordingly.
DUMMY	Report data are discarded.
INFOLINE	Report data are sent to the infoline. See also the description of the terminal command %X.
NOM	Prints to an Entire Output Management container file without using the spool of the operating system. Refer to the Entire Output Management documentation for details.

Report 0 is always implicitly assigned to VIDEO (that is, the output is shown on the screen). No other report number can be assigned to VIDEO.

Profile

In addition to the name of the logical device, you can assign a printer profile that has been defined in the Printer Profiles node of the global configuration file. All defined printer profiles can be selected by pressing F2. Select the blank entry if you do not want to use any of these profiles.

Error Handling

The following profile parameters are used to control error handling within Natural.

Field Appearance

The following profile parameters influence I/O handling.

Limits

The following profile parameters are used to prevent a single program from consuming an excessive amount of internal resources.

Program Loading and Deletion

The following profile parameters are used to control the dynamic loading and deletion of programs.

Regional Settings

The following profile parameters are used to control the country- or region-specific settings of Natural.

Report Parameters

The following profile parameters are used to control various attributes of Natural reports.

Steplibs

The following parameters are used to manage the steplibs.

Additional Steplib Assignments

You can define up to eight libraries that can be searched for objects which cannot be found in the current library. These additional steplibs are defined in a table. The steplib number is shown in the first column. The following information can be specified:

Name

The name of an existing library.

DBID

The database ID of the file system where the library is located.

FNR

The file number of the file system where the library is located.

Note:
The following application programming interfaces are available for handling multiple steplibs: USR3025N (when Natural Security is not installed) and USR4025N (when Natural Security is installed).

System Files

The following profile parameters are used to specify the Natural system files.

The physical location of each system file is defined in the global configuration file. See System Files in the global configuration file.

System Variables

The following profile parameters are used to adjust Natural system variables for the start of a Natural session.

See also the System Variables documentation.

Note:
You can use the command line parameter PARM to specify a specific Natural parameter file at session startup. This parameter can only be specified dynamically, therefore, it cannot be modified or viewed within the Configuration Utility.

Work Files

The following profile parameters can be used to specify work file settings.

See also the profile parameter CMWRKnn which applies to batch mode.

See also Work Files in the Operations documentation.

Work File Assignments

The work file assignments are shown in a scrollable list containing work files with the numbers 1 to 32. The work file number is shown in the first column. When a work file name has already been defined for a work file number, this information (path and name) is shown in the Name column.

The following information can be changed:

Type

For each work file number, you can select another work file type. Possible values are (you can also press PF2 to select one of these values):

Work File Type	Description
Default	Determines the file type from the extension for upward compatibility.
Transfer	Used to transfer data to and from a PC with Entire Connection. This work file type represents a data connection between a Natural session on UNIX or OpenVMS and an Entire Connection terminal on a PC. The work file data is written in Entire Connection format on the PC.
SAG	Binary format.
ASCII	Text files with records terminated by a linefeed (LF). When you press PF4, you can change the properties for this work file type: a dialog box appears in which you can specify the following information: Code page You can specify the code page that is to be used for writing the work file (ICU code page name; IANA name recommended). When a code page is not defined here, the default code page defined with CP is used.
ASCII compressed	ASCII format where all trailing blanks are removed. When you press PF4, you can change the properties for this work file type: a dialog box appears in which you can specify the following information: Code page You can specify the code page that is to be used for writing the work file (ICU code page name; IANA name recommended). When a code page is not defined here, the default code page defined with CP is used.
Entire Connection	With this work file type, you can read and write (for example, with the statements READ WORK FILE and WRITE WORK FILE) directly to a work file in Entire Connection format on the local disk. Note: No transfer to a PC is possible. The Entire Connection terminal is not used in this process.
Unformatted	A completely unformatted file. No formatting information is written (neither for fields nor for records). When you press PF4, you can change the properties for this work file type: a dialog box appears in which you can specify the following information: Code page You can specify the code page that is to be used for writing the work file (ICU code page name; IANA name recommended). When a code page is not defined here, the default code page defined with CP is used.
Portable	Files which can handle dynamic variables exactly and can also be transported (for example, from a little endian machine to a big endian machine, and vice versa).
CSV	Comma-separated values. Each record is written to one line in the file. By default, a header is not written. The default character which is used to separate the data fields is a semicolon (;). When you press PF4, you can change the properties for this work file type: a dialog box appears in which you can specify the following information: Header When set to "ON", a header with the Natural field names is written to the file. Separator character You can select a different separator character. If you require a separator character which is not listed, you can enter it. Code page You can specify the code page that is to be used for writing the work file (ICU code page name; IANA name recommended). When a code page is not defined here, the default code page defined with CP is used.

For information on the work file formats which result from a specific work file type, see Work File Formats in the Operations documentation.

Close mode

You can select a different close mode for each work file. Possible values are:

Close Mode	Description
Auto	This is the default setting. Work files are automatically closed at the end of a program or when the execution of the first called method in a method call hierarchy is terminated and the first called method was called over COM. If the first called method was called locally (not over COM), the work files are not closed. Example: Method A (called over COM) invokes method B which in turn invokes method C. When the execution of method A is terminated, all work files are closed.
User	Closing of work files is controlled by the user. The work file is closed, if one of the following conditions is met: a CLOSE WORK FILE statement is executed, a DEFINE WORK FILE statement is executed, the session terminates.

The following program example describes the user-controlled closing of work files. Note that the close mode must be first set in the parameter file.

DEFINE DATA
  LOCAL
  1 #OUT (A8)
END-DEFINE
*
#OUT := *PROGRAM
*
* Write to work file with close mode "user"
WRITE WORK 1 'OUTPUT PROGRAM: ' #OUT
*
* Write to work file with close mode "auto"
WRITE WORK 2 'OUTPUT PROGRAM: ' #OUT
*
* Close work file 1
* Work file 1 is user-controlled
CLOSE WORK FILE 1
*
END

Attributes

You can define different attributes for each work file. You can specify one attribute for each of the following categories:

Category	Possible Attributes	Default Attribute	Description
Append mode	NOAPPEND or APPEND	NOAPPEND	Decides whether new data overwrites the current data in the work file or whether new data is appended at the end of the current data.
Keep/delete work file after close	KEEP or DELETE	KEEP	Decides whether the work file is kept after closing it or whether it is deleted.
Write byte order mark (BOM)	BOM or NOBOM	NOBOM	Decides whether a byte order mark is written in front of the work file data. Only available for the work file types which write code page data: ASCII, ASCII compressed, Unformatted and CSV. For these work file types, the attribute BOM can only be set, if the code page UTF-8 is defined for the work file (see the description of the Type column). If a work file of another type is written or a code page other than UTF-8 is defined, the specification of the attribute BOM is ignored during runtime. See also Work Files and Print Files on Windows, UNIX and OpenVMS Platforms in the Unicode and Code Page Support documentation.
Remove/keep carriage return	REMOVECR or KEEPCR	REMOVECR	Decides whether carriage return characters are removed when reading an ASCII work file or whether they are kept. Only available for the following work file types: ASCII and ASCII compressed. If one of the attributes is set for another work file type, it is ignored during runtime. Warning: Use KEEPCR with care. ASCII format is only recommended for alphanumeric data. Binary data should not be processed with ASCII work files. When you use KEEPCR, the work file record may include carriage return characters. The use of KEEPCR only makes sense when reading ASCII work files which have been written on UNIX or OpenVMS. It does not make sense to use KEEPCR with ASCII work files which have been written on Windows.

Attributes cannot be defined for the work file type "Transfer".

You can enter a unique abbreviation for each attribute. The delimiter character can be one of the following: blank, comma(,) or semicolon (;). Example: "a, d" which stands for APPEND and DELETE.

You can only specify one attribute for each category. You can specify them in any sequence. When no attributes are specified in the table, the default values are used.

Name

Specify the location (path and name) of the work file.

See also Defining Work File Names with Environment Variables in the Operations documentation.

Natural Development Environment

This parameter group contains the following categories:

• Compiler Options

• Editor Options

• Environment Assignments

• Remote Debugging

Compiler Options

The following profile parameters are used to set options for the Natural compiler.

See also the description of the system command COMPOPT.

Editor Options

The following profile parameter is used to set an option for the Natural editor.

Environment Assignments

The following profile parameters are used to adjust Natural environment variables.

Remote Debugging

The following profile parameters are used to allow for remote debugging.

Product Configuration

This parameter group contains the following categories:

• Entire Transaction Propagator

• Entire System Server

• Function Keys

• Web I/O Interface

Entire Transaction Propagator

The following profile parameters are used in conjunction with Software AG's Entire Transaction Propagator.

Entire System Server

The following profile parameter is used in conjunction with Software AG's Entire System Server Interface.

Function Keys

The following profile parameter is used to assign values to PA, PF and CLEAR keys.

Web I/O Interface

The following profile parameter is used for Unicode support with the Natural Web I/O Interface.

Client/Server

This parameter group contains the following categories:

• HTTP Parameters

• Remote Dictionary Access

• Remote Procedure Call

HTTP Parameters

The following profile parameter is used to provide HTTP support.

Remote Dictionary Access

The following profile parameter is used for remote dictionary access.

Remote Procedure Call

The profile parameters which apply to the Natural Remote Procedure Call (RPC) are grouped under the following headings:

• RPC (General)
• RPC (Client)
• RPC (Server)

RPC (General)

These profile parameters apply to both client and server.

RPC (Client)

These profile parameters apply to the client only.

RPC (Server)

These profile parameters apply to the server only.