Exercise 7.10: Accessing field properties

Before you begin, you must complete Exercise 7.9: Adding field error handling.

Second to the direct manipulation and the toolbar on the Design page, the easiest and quickest ways of getting access to the properties of a field, record, or entire file is the Properties notebook.

The Properties notebook lets you view and update the properties of the currently selected DDS object. You can open this notebook from any view, pop-up menu, or menu of the CODE Designer.

The Properties notebook is modeless. When you change an object's properties, the selected object changes immediately.

You can get to a Properties notebook from the Selected menu, by pressing F4, or double-click on anything in the DDS tree or the Details page or Design page.

To open the Properties notebook:

  1. In the DDS tree, click the record SELECT and press F4 to see the Record properties.
    Record properties page

    As you select different items, the Properties notebook will continuously update itself to show you the properties of the selected item.

  2. Click the *DATE field in the SELECT record. (You may have to move the Properties notebook out of the way.) This field has a different set of pages describing its properties.
    DATE field
  3. Change the year from 2 to 4 digits. Select the Length of year check box.
  4. Select 4 digits from the list.
    Field Properties

    Notice how the sample is updated on the Properties notebook.

  5. To test the Design page, click the MAIN_MENU tab in the workbook and look at the upper right corner of the screen. The year now has 4 digits.
  6. Click the EMPAPL field in the SELECT record. On the Field properties notebook click the Basics tab.

    On this page you can change the field's name, usage, length, type, and screen position. The other pages give you quick access to other properties of this field.
    Field Properties

You have seen the record properties for the record SELECT and changed the length of year to 4 digits and you are ready to begin Exercise 7.11: Adding new keywords.