FORM.COLUMNS

Use FORM.COLUMNS to make choices about the uses of the columns. What you specify on FORM.COLUMNS is reflected on FORM.MAIN. Conversely, what you specify on FORM.MAIN (areas  A  through  F ) is reflected on FORM.COLUMNS.

FORM.COLUMNS
 
COLUMNS:           Total Width of Report Columns: 66
             A                           B        C      D       E       F 
 NUM    COLUMN HEADING                  USAGE    INDENT  WIDTH   EDIT   SEQ
 ---    ------------------------------  ------   -----   -----   -----  ---
   1    ID                                       2       6       L      1
   2    NAME                                     2       9       C      2
   3    DEPT                                     2       6       L      3
   4    JOB                                      2       5       C      4
   5    YEARS                                    2       6       L      5
   6    SALARY                                   2       10      L2     6
   7    COMM                                     2       10      L2     7
   8    Total Earnings                           2       12      L2     8
        *** END ***
 
 1=Help        2=Check     3=End       4=Show        5=Chart     6=Query
 7=Backward    8=Forward   9=Specify  10=Insert     11=Delete   12=Report
 OK, FORM.COLUMNS is displayed.
 COMMAND ===>                                            SCROLL ===> PAGE
 

 A  COLUMN HEADING

Reports: Assign column headings. On the default form, column headings can be any of the following:

• The label assigned to the column (if your installation uses labels)
• The name of the column in the table from which it was selected
• A heading constructed by QMF for columns of constants or calculated values

If your installation supports DBCS data, see Names with double-byte characters.

You can enter any new heading of up to 40 characters over a heading shown in the COLUMN HEADING area. The heading, like the original column name, can contain blanks or special characters; of these, the underscore character (_) is reserved for multiple-line headings.

To create multiple-line headings, use an underscore in a column heading to specify a break between lines. For example:
EMPLOYEE_NAME displays as: EMPLOYEE NAME
A single underscore before or after an entire column heading has no effect. For example, _EMPLOYEE NAME does not add a blank line. However, consecutive underscores within text produce one or more blank lines in a column title. You can have up to nine lines in a column heading.

For example, these two column names:

1  ONE_TWO_THREE_FOUR_FIVE_SIX_SEVEN
2  SIX_ _LINE_ _ _TITLE

Display as:

      ONE         SIX
      TWO
     THREE       LINE
     FOUR
     FIVE
      SIX        TITLE
     SEVEN

If you are using double-byte characters in column headings, you can specify a break between lines if the underscore you use is a single-byte character.

To create column headings in uppercase and lowercase, specify in your PROFILE a CASE value of either STRING or MIXED.

STRING

Displays column heading text as entered, but converts any other input to uppercase.

MIXED

Displays all input exactly as entered.

Headings are aligned (justified) to the left over a column of character data, and to the right over a column of numeric data. If there is more than one line in the heading, the longest line is justified, and shorter lines are centered within the longest line. You can override these defaults by entering a new alignment value. See Column alignment for more information.

If any line of a heading is longer than the width of the column, it fills the whole width of the column and is cut off on the right.

Global variable substitution is not performed for column headings.

Charts: Most of the preceding information on how changes to COLUMN HEADING affect reports is also true for charts. Column headings for data plotted on the Y-axis appear in the legend of a chart. Therefore, you probably want these column headings to be as concise as possible, or the legend will take up too much space on the chart.

 B  USAGE

Reports: Specify how you want a column processed for a report. If the usage code for a column is blank, the values in the column are listed with no other processing unless one or more columns in the report has a usage of GROUP and at least one column has an aggregation usage. In that case, blank columns are omitted. A number of aggregation functions, listed in Table 9, can be entered in the area.

 C  INDENT

Reports: Specify the number of blank spaces to the left of a column. The blank spaces separate the column from the previous column or from the left margin. INDENT can be any number from 0 through 999. For columns using a graphic edit code, the minimum indent is 1. The default INDENT for each column is 2.

INDENT is always specified in single-byte characters.

 D  WIDTH

Reports: Specify the number of character positions reserved for displaying data from a column, or the column heading. WIDTH can be any number from 1 through 32,767.

If the column you are displaying uses a graphic edit code, the width can be any number from 1 through 16,383. For more information about how to calculate the width of a column containing DBCS data, see the Using QMF manual.

For a column that uses a graphic edit code, the width of the column, when displayed or printed, is twice the column width, plus one character space.

When assigning a width for numeric data, include space for the following characters as well as for digits:

• A minus sign (except with edit code J)
• A decimal point (when edit codes specify them)
• Separators for groups of thousands (with edit codes D, K, and P)
• A currency symbol (with edit code D)
• A percent sign (with edit code P)

If the length of a value to be displayed exceeds the width of the column:

• If it is numeric data, it is replaced with a row of asterisks (********)

  In some cases, you can avoid a numeric overflow by using a different data type. For example, in an arithmetic operation, if all operands are decimal numbers and an overflow occurs, you can change at least one operand to a floating point number. In this example, the operand can be a floating point constant or a floating point table column.

• If it is character, date, time, or timestamp data, it is cut off at the right or left (depending on the alignment specified for the data)

Resolve column width problems by changing WIDTH and displaying the report again. Alternatively, you can tell QMF to keep the column width the same, but to wrap data that will not fit on a line to the next line in the column. Column wrapping applies only to nonnumeric data. For more information about column wrapping, see Edit Codes.

The width of a column on the default form is at least as great as the longest line in the column heading. Otherwise, the assigned width depends on the data type of the column, as shown in Table 10.

Table 10. Default width of data types

Data Type	Width on Default Form
SMALLINT	6
INTEGER	11
DECIMAL	The width of the column in the database, plus 3 character spaces.
FLOAT	10
CHAR	The width of the column in the database.
VARCHAR	The maximum width of the column in the database.
LONG VARCHAR	The smaller of: The column width A width determined by QMF, based on the quantity and type of other columns in the report
GRAPHIC	The width of the column in the database.
VARGRAPHIC	The width of the column in the database.
LONG VARGRAPHIC	The smaller of: The column width. A width determined by QMF, based on the quantity and type of other columns in the report.
DATE	10, or if your date format is locally defined by your installation, the larger of: The width of the column heading The width of the locally defined date format
TIME	8, or if your time format is locally defined by your installation, the larger of: The width of the column heading The width of the locally defined time format
TIMESTAMP	26

When inserting a line on FORM.COLUMNS, the default width is 10.

For single-precision floating point data, values with a data type of FLOAT are treated the same for single-precision or double-precision.

Charts: Specify the number of character positions for labels on the X-axis of a chart.

If the width exceeds the allotted space, the labels might be omitted. Truncating the width of column headings is one way to handle the problem of omitted labels. When labels are truncated, more fit in the allotted space.

Single-precision floating point data is treated the same as double-precision floating point data for chart formatting.

Values from columns with DATE, TIME, and TIMESTAMP data types, (treated as character strings) cannot appear on the Y-axis.

 E EDIT

Reports: Specify how QMF formats data for display. The default is C when inserting a line in FORM.COLUMNS.

Charts: The X-axis labels come from columns using GROUP or BREAK (or from the leftmost column of the report when there is no GROUP or BREAK). The effect that edit codes have on the data in those columns appears in the X-axis labels. For example, if data selected for the X-axis is column wrapped, only the first line is incorporated into the labels.

Also, numeric columns that are edited with Uxxxx or Vxxxx cannot be used for Y data.

Finally, when column substitution values (amp;n) are used in the page heading (and therefore, in the chart heading), they are edited according to the edit code for that column in the form.

Table 11 lists the edit codes that can be specified for each data type and the page that contains more information.

You can use character edit codes with DATE, TIME, and TIMESTAMP columns to allow wrapping of those columns.

 F  SEQ

Reports: Enter numbers in this column to change the sequence of the columns in your report. Initial settings are the same as for the NUM column. Any numbers from 1 through 999 are allowed. If two numbers are the same, those columns appear in the same order they are listed on the form. The Automatic reordering of report columns option on the FORM.OPTIONS panel must be set to NO (the default) for SEQ to have an effect on column reordering.

When variables are resolved, the column number is taken from NUM, not SEQ.

SEQ numbers are ignored in ACROSS reports.