Exercise 7.3: Selecting the DDS object

Before you begin, you must complete Exercise 7.2: Viewing the DDS tree.

In the upper right-hand side of the Designer is the Workbook with several different tabbed pages. The Workbook is the area of the CODE Designer where you design display files, printer or physical files. You can view this notebook on the top right-hand side of the CODE Designer window. The top page is called Details and it provides a detailed view of the DDS objects selected by the DDS Tree. You can view this page in either details mode or list mode by clicking View > List from the CODE Designer menu.

In the Details page columns display information about the selected DDS object. You can use this page to display for example, details of all the fields in the record SELECT or keywords and conditions of a field or record.

The Listing page is a listing of the source statements generated by the Program Verifier.

In the bottom right-hand side of the Designer is the Utility notebook. This notebook contains several pages: Selected DDS, Web Settings, Comments and Error List. The Selected DDS page in the notebook shows the actual DDS source for the currently selected item.

Note:
The Web Settings page allows you to specify attributes that are used by the WebFacing tool.

To work with the DDS record SELECT:

  1. In the DDS tree click the SELECT record.

    The Details page lists all the fields in the record SELECT and summarizes some of their properties. The Selected DDS page shows the DDS for the SELECT record.
    DDS Page

  2. In the DDS tree click Record keywords immediately below SELECT.

    The Details page shows the current record-level keywords. The Selected DDS page still shows the DDS for the SELECT record.
    Current record-level keywords and DDS for SELECT record

  3. In the DDS tree click the EMESS field.

    The Details page shows its field-level keywords. The Selected DDS page now shows the DDS for the EMESS field.
    EMESS field

    Even this relatively small and simple DDS source member demonstrates how much easier it is to use the Designer to navigate through your DDS source. The syntax is being interpreted in intuitive graphical ways making it an ideal tool for learning DDS. But to get orders of magnitude improvement in your productivity what you really need is to work with your screens and reports in a WYSIWYG fashion, completely independent of the DDS required to make things appear the way they do. You need the Design Page.

You have seen the details of the record SELECT, the record-level keywords and the field-level keywords and you are ready to begin Exercise 7.4: Designing the DDS screen.