Object Type Administration

• must have at least three characters and start with a letter (a-z, A-Z).

• must not contain blanks.

• must be unique, and must not be an abbreviated form of an existing object type (for example, Key is not permitted because it could be confused with the predefined object type Keyword).

• must not start with an object type that already exists (for example, Filecard is not permitted).

Determines the handling of the owner list:

Allow: the owner list can be edited.

Up to five maintenance screens can be defined for each object type. When a number between 1 and 5 is entered, the corresponding screen for attribute definition is selected. Only an existing screen or the next free screen can be selected.

If zero is entered, the Metadata Administration menu appears. If 'H' is entered, the header is displayed.

Format of the attribute:

alphanumeric

date

logical

numeric

time

literal

The length of an attribute value depends on the format:

1 to 78

1 to 27 places before the decimal point, and 0 to 7 places after the decimal point, where the total number of places must not exceed 27

This field is only valid for alphanumeric attributes (type A).

The attribute value is converted to capital letters.

No conversion to capital letters.

• line (1 < line < 15)

• column (1 < column < 78)

• line (1 < line < 15)

• column (1 < column < 78)

Extended attribute description. Subsequent screens for the definition or modification of edit masks and verifications for the attribute are displayed.

edit mask (only for types D, L and T)

table of verification values

range of verification values

external verification (special check)
For type X (literal) neither edit masks nor verifications can be defined; for type L (logical) no verifications can be defined.

The following default values apply to edit masks:

F/T

YYYY-MM-DD

HH:II:SS

Changing the verification type (T, R or S) is possible. In this case, the old verification is deleted. Before deletion, a warning is displayed. The corresponding object data remain unchanged.

The maintenance screen is displayed to test the screen layout.

Each definition screen can contain ten attributes. If more attributes are to be defined (up to 40), this field is used to display a subsequent screen.

For any defined Value_X, AA is a mandatory field with one of the following possible values: EQ (equal), NE (not equal), LT (less than), LE (less than or equal), GT (greater than), GE (greater than or equal). If you enter an asterisk, the possible values are displayed in a selection window.

Value_X are the verification values. Up to six verification values can be defined.

For type A (alphanumeric), the length is restricted to 32 - independent of the length of the attribute itself.
For type N (numeric), the following applies: a maximum of 20 digits before and 7 digits after the decimal point can be entered.

If DATE is entered for type D (date), the verification value is the current date.

BBB is one of the possible values AND or OR which combines the two elementary conditions of one line in a boolean expression.

CCC combines the boolean expressions defined in each line with the operand AND or OR. The logical expressions are always processed line by line.

In the following fields, you can define up to three object attributes, which are defined in one maintenance screen, as input parameters for the subprogram. If you enter an asterisk, the names of the object attributes of this maintenance screen are displayed in a selection window.

Attributes of type X (literal) cannot be defined as input parameters for the subprogram.

The values of these attributes are passed to the defined subprogram in alphanumeric format (length 78) as follows:

• type A: left aligned with leading blanks. If Case = U, letters are converted to capital letters.

• types D and T: right aligned according to their internal representation.

• type L: left aligned; "1" for TRUE and "0" for FALSE.

• type N: right aligned without decimal point. All places after the decimal point (according to the attribute definition) are passed. The number of places after the decimal point is passed by an additional parameter. With negative values, the sign is passed as well. Leading zeros are suppressed.

The following CALLNAT statement is generated:

CALLNAT 'subprogram'
PAR1 PAR2 PAR3
RETURN-CODE RETURN-TEXT1 RETURN-TEXT2

PAR1 PAR2 PAR3:

values of the attributes (format A78);

RETURN-CODE:

number of a Predict error message (format I2); RETURN-TEXT1 and RETURN-TEXT2: texts as parameters for this error message (format A34).

In the subprogram, attribute values of the types D, N, and T can be converted using the Natural function VAL.

The verification rules are processed screen by screen. Independent of the sequential numbers of the attributes to be verified, the verification rules with external verification routines are processed last - they are only processed after all verification rules with tables of values and ranges of values have been processed.