A Net.Data macro is a plain text file consisting of a series of Net.Data macro language statements. Each statement is composed of one or more language constructs, which in turn are composed of keywords, special characters, strings, names, and variables. The following diagram depicts the global structure of a syntactically valid Net.Data macro. See "Language Constructs" for detailed syntax of each element in the global structure.
+-------------------------------------------------+
| +-------------------------+ +---------------+ |
V V | V | |
>>-----+-----------------------++------html block--+-+---------><
+-comment block---------+
+-define statement------+
+-define block----------+
+-function block--------+
+-macro if block--------+
+-include statement-----+
+-include_url statement-+
+-message block---------+
The Net.Data macro contains two parts: the declaration part and the HTML part. You can use these parts multiple times and in any order.
The Net.Data macro language is a free-form language, giving you flexibility for writing your macros. The length of a line in your Net.Data macro must not exceed 64K bytes. Unless specifically noted, extra white space characters are ignored. Each of the Net.Data macro language constructs is described in the following section, along with several other elements which are used to define the constructs. The Net.Data macro language supports DB2 WWW Connection language elements for backward compatability. Although these language elements are described in Appendix A. "DB2 WWW Connection", we recommend that you use the Net.Data features.
The examples show some of the ways you can use the language constructs, variables, functions, and other elements in your macro files. You can download the samples and demos from the Net.Data Web page for more extensive examples:
http://www.software.ibm.com/data/net.data