Micro Focus Visual COBOL 2.3 for Visual Studio 2015 > Programming > Data Access > Database Connectors > Database Connectors Reference > XFD Directives > BINARY XFD directive

BINARY XFD directive

Restriction: This topic applies only when a Database Connectors license has been installed via the Micro Focus License Management System.

The BINARY XFD directive is used to specify that the data in the field could be alphanumeric data of any classification. Absolutely any data is allowed.

The BINARY XFD directive cannot be used in combination with the VAR_LENGTH XFD directive.

The method of storing fields declared as binary is database-specific. For example, Oracle uses the data type raw for the field.

Syntax

$XFD BINARY

Example

You might use this XFD directive when you need to store a key that contains LOW-VALUES; COBOL allows a numeric field to contain LOW or HIGH values, but these are invalid for a numeric field in the RDBMS:

 01  code-record.
     03  code-key.
         05  code-indic          pic x.
$XFD BINARY
         05  code-num            pic 9(5).
         05  code-suffix         pic x(3).
             .
             .
             .
 move low-values to code-num.