The following are XFD directives for
Database Connectors.
XFD directives provide extended control over how the database table is built. Among other things, they let you:
- Specify a column name to be used in the database table, in place of a COBOL field name.
- Map elementary items of a group item together into a single column.
- Cause numeric COBOL data to be treated as a text string in the database.
- Cause the fields from a specific record in a file to appear in the database table (rather than just the fields from the largest
record).
- Assign a column the DATE type, providing the built-in functionality that dates have in the RDBMS.
- Give a name to the XFD file itself.
XFD directives are always placed within a COBOL FD. They do not affect Procedure Division I/O statements, and they do not
change your COBOL fields in any way. Rather, they guide the building of the XFDs, giving you control over the way COBOL data
maps to database fields.