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Assignments

Describes the use of assignments for application fields in service interfaces.

In the Assignments pane, you can assign a value to any application field. The value you specify can be a numeric or non-numeric literal or application field value, or the result of a function using one or more such values. By assigning values to certain fields, you can streamline the service by reducing the amount of information that must be supplied by the user.

For example, let's say that your application adds, modifies, and deletes records in a database. In its original form, the application requires users to enter A for add, M for modify, or D for delete into a certain screen field. Let's also say that you want this service interface to add records but not modify or delete them. By assigning the literal A to the appropriate screen field, you eliminate the need for the user to enter a value.

As with mappings, you can only create assignments using elementary application fields. If the assignment includes an array field, you can make the assignment using an asterisk (*) to show that all occurrences of that field are included, or you can use a subscript to specify a particular occurrence. See Arrays for more information.

You can also make an assignment conditional. See Conditional Statements for more information.

Functions/Operators

You can specify a function or an operator to generate a value for assignment. You can add, subtract, multiply, or divide two literal values or field values. You can also concatenate two string values or extract part of a string value.

ATTENTION ID

The Interface Mapper provides a special assignment field named ATTENTION ID. Assign this field to the name of a keyboard key to represent the user pressing that key when this screen is displayed. The Interface Mapper provides a list of valid keys from which to choose. The most common value for ATTENTION ID is ENTER to represent pressing the Enter key to transition from one screen to another.

CURSOR POSITION

The Interface Mapper provides a special assignment field named CURSOR POSITION that enables you to represent the placement of the cursor on a specific screen field.

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