Data Item

Like the dictionary items described in this section, user data in a data section is arranged in items. An example format of a data item is given below.

Item Format

Attribute	Description
Item-id	309
001	8232
002	Mendell
003	Robert S.
004	545 Parker Ave
005	New York
006	NY
007	10022
008	USA
009	AMEX
010	2]2]2]15
011	8247
012	78.00]34.00]78.00]5.87

The example above is taken from the data section GUESTS in the English-TUTORIAL account which is a system account provided on a newly created database.

Data is provided in attributes 1 to 12 as shown. The attribute line number corresponds to the attribute mark count in attribute 2 of the data definition items in the file dictionary, in this case, DICT GUESTS. Hence, the data definition item with AMC equal to 1 (item-id is ARRIVAL-DATE) describes the English format and processing of data in attribute 1 (8232).

In this example, the date is stored in internal format (8232) and the data definition item ARRIVAL-DATE contains the conversion code in attribute 7 to convert the date to external format. Other definition data in the ARRIVAL-DATE item formats the Arrival-Date column in an English report.

Similarly the Name and Address data in attributes 2 to 8 is formatted in an English report by data definition items with AMCs 2 to 8 and so on.

See the topic Data Definition Item and the English Reference for more details.