Information stored in a template

The list below describes the information that a template can contain, and where and how File Manager uses the information.

Record type selection

Determines which record types are selected or unselected.

Unselected record types are excluded when comparing, copying or printing.

When creating a data set, the records in the new data set are of the record type first selected in the template.

Record identification criteria

Determines which records belong to each record type in the template.

Records that do not belong to a record type in the template are indicated as “not selected” when viewing or editing, and are excluded when comparing, copying¹ or printing.

Record selection criteria

Determines which records, having been identified as belonging to a record type, are to be selected.

Records that do not match the record selection criteria are indicated as “not selected” when viewing or editing, and are excluded when comparing, copying¹ or printing.

Records that are not selected may not be included in the editor session, depending on the setting of the Include only selected records option. Furthermore, if the template describes segmented data, the record selection criteria affects the selection of the entire physical record. When this occurs, none of the segments belonging to the physical record are provided in an editor session and they are excluded when comparing, copying, or printing.

Field selection

Determines which fields are displayed (when viewing or editing) or printed. This information is ignored when comparing, copying or creating data sets.

When copying, if you want to exclude some fields in the input data set from being copied to the output data set, then you need to create a “To” copybook or dynamic template without those fields.

When comparing, if you want to exclude fields from the comparison, you need to create an “Old” and a “New” copybook or dynamic template and then remove the default field mapping for the fields to be excluded.

Field sequence

Overrides the default order in which fields are displayed (when viewing or editing) or printed. By default, fields are displayed or printed in the order in which they were defined in the copybook. This information is ignored when comparing, copying or creating data sets.

When copying, if you want to change the order of fields in the input data set and the output data set, then you need to create a “To” copybook or dynamic template with the fields in the desired order.

Key sequence

Determines the sequence of fields to be included in a multi-segment key, which can be used when performing a file comparison with keyed synchronization.

Field headings

Overrides the default field headings when viewing, editing, comparing or printing. (The default field headings are the field names defined in the copybook.)

Field attributes

The field name, data type, starting column and length, as defined in the dynamic template or in the copybook on which a template is based. These attributes are fixed in a copybook template, as they are determined by the underlying copybooks, but can be edited in a dynamic template.

If you make minor changes to field attributes in a copybook, you can (with some restrictions) update the template generated from it, while keeping all of the other existing information in the template.

Field use attributes

Consist of two attributes:

Output width

Defines the number of columns allocated to the field when viewing, editing or printing. By default, this is the width defined in the copybook by the picture specification.

If a numeric field contains a valid numeric value, but the value is too large to fit in the output width, then, when viewing or editing in SNGL or TABL display format, the value is truncated and highlighted.

Leading zeros (numeric fields only)

Defines whether or not the field value is shown with leading zeros when viewing, editing, comparing or printing.

Field create attributes

Defines the value to which the field is initialized when copying² or creating a data set.

Field mapping

Defines which fields in the “From” template map to fields in the “To” template, when copying² a data set; or which fields in the “Old” template map to fields in the “New” template, when comparing two data sets.

Scrambling options

Determine how the contents of the field are scrambled (if at all) during a copy process.

Date/Time Attributes

Defines the attributes of a field that holds date and time values (or either). These attributes include the definition of the format used to store the date and time value in the field and the format used to display the date and time value. Create and modify attributes can also be specified. These attributes define how the value in the date and time field should be initialized when creating or copying the data set. Scrambling options are also available and define how the contents of the date and time field are scrambled (if at all) during a copy process.

Related topics

• Copying data sets
• Comparing data sets using templates
• Managing templates with the Template Workbench