RE: external data area

[Brian Johnson <brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Plan A

Write an RPG (or COBOL, or whatever) program that can access the data   
area and defined the sub-field as packed-decimal.  This program would   
provide retrieve and update routines for the data area.  All knowledge of   
the structure of the record in the data area would be hidden from all   
other programs.

Plan B

Don't store a record in one data area, but create separate data areas for   
each of the fields in the record stored in the existing data area.  This   
allows declaration of the data type for each field.  No need to (mis)code   
substring values, just make the declared variable data type and length   
match the data type and length of the data area (easy!).
 --
Brian Johnson
Help/Systems, Inc.
brian@helpsystems.com


 ----------
From:  'mail@uucp <boothm@earth.goddard.edu>'
Sent:  Tue, Jul 1, 1997 0:24 AM
To:  brian; 'mail@uucp <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>'
Subject:  re: external data area

I want one of the fields in a 57 character external data area to be
numeric.  I can not figure out how to do that in CL.  It seems to be
insisting on *CHAR only, no numerics.  Can I put numeric values in the
data area?  say...  put a minus 3500 starting at postion 45

     CHGDTAARA DTAARA(SMPLDA (45 4) VALUE(-3500)

doesn't work.  Any ideas?
 --
 -----------------------------------------------------------
boothm@earth.goddard.edu
 -----------------------------------------------------------

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