Supported Directives

Micro Focus XDBC supports the following directives. The table supplies a brief description of each directive; for complete descriptions and examples, follow the links.

The CREATEXFD directive is required in your program's FD; the other directives are optional.

For more information, see Directive Syntax.

Note: The examples included with the complete descriptions of the directives may be cumulative. In other words, beginning with ALPHA and continuing alphabetically through the list of directives, some examples show the cumulative effects of the preceding directives. Therefore, your table may not appear the same as the table in an example if you haven't applied the preceding directives. The example for the WHEN directive includes most of the preceding directives.

Directive	Description
ALPHA	Allows you to treat a data item as alphanumeric text in the database, when it is declared as numeric in the COBOL program
BINARY	Specifies that the data in the field could be alphanumeric data of any classification
COMMENT	Allows you to include comments in an XFD file
CREATEXFD	Generates the XFDs required by Micro Focus XDBC
DATE	Creates a map between the ODBC or JDBC application date fields and COBOL numeric fields
FILE	Supplies a starting name from which the XFD file name is formed
HIDDEN	Allows you to hide specific data items from end users, while providing normal access to other data items
NAME	Assigns a database field name to the data item defined on the next line
NUMERIC	Allows you to treat a data item as an unsigned integer when it is declared as alphanumeric
READ-ONLY	Allows you to make some fields/columns of data read-only, while preserving normal access to other fields/columns
SUBTABLE	Modifies the way fields that appear in an OCCURS clause are processed, resulting in the creation of subtables
USE GROUP	Indicates that the following group item is to correspond to a column as if it were an elementary item of the same width
VAR_LENGTH	Requests that the data item that immediately follows the directive be assigned a type that implies variable length
WHEN	Includes multiple record definitions or REDEFINES in the XFD for use with your application
XSL	Allows you to include a stylesheet reference in the XML header