Re: Keying Program Described Files

[Pete Hall <peteh@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 06:40 PM 4/21/98 +0500, Ramesh T wrote:
>Is it necessary that parts of Composite Key used to Key a Indexed Program
>Described File should be contigious in the record.

No it is not. On the F-Spec, just specify position 1. RPG won't know the 
difference. This was standard practice back when I was doing 36-400 conversions.

>Is there any way to Key a Program Described Flat File without creating
>External DDS.

If you really need it to be a flat file, the only way I know of is by using the 
36EE BLDFILE and BLDINDEX procedures. If you just want to use the file as a 
program described file in RPG or Cobol, you can create the file any way you 
like. It doesn't matter if the file definition contains field information or 
not. Actually, even the BLDFILE and BLDINDEX procedures create fields that 
define the key(s) and the data space, but the procedures are able to set the 
attribute that makes it a "flat" file. The only applications that I know of 
that care are the 36EE program products IDDU, DFU and Query. They will refuse 
to work with a file that isn't "flat".

hth
Pete



Pete Hall
peteh@inwave.com 
http://www.inwave.com/~peteh/

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