HP System Dictionary/XL SDMAIN Reference Manual (32256-90001)

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>>DESCRIPTION = " Report to provide complete data description. Command execution is again
enabled.
>>about occurrences of entity-type element.".
>EXECUTE element-report. Executes the stored report.
Dictionary Attribute Prompting Facility
SDMAIN provides an attribute prompting facility that prompts for attribute values whenever you issue a
CREATE, MODIFY, or REPORT command without the ATTRIBUTE-LIST parameter. For the CREATE
command, all possible attributes that can have values assigned to them are displayed for the command in
the menu format. For the MODIFY command, all possible attributes that can be changed are displayed,
and for the REPORT command, all attribute values that can be qualified (to limit what is retrieved) are
displayed.
Attribute prompting does not occur for the CREATE ENTITY or CREATE RELATIONSHIP command if
the entity or relationship being created already exists in the dictionary. Attribute prompting does not
occur for the MODIFY ENTITY or MODIFY RELATIONSHIP command if the entity or relationship being
modified does not exist. Attribute prompting is not performed when input is from a file or when you are
executing in batch mode.
Prompting can be turned ON or OFF by using the OPTIONS command. When you run SDMAIN
interactively, prompting is initially ON. While prompting is ON, the prompt menu is issued only when the
ATTRIBUTE-LIST parameter is omitted from a command that allows it (so ATTRIBUTE-LIST = ()
disables prompting for the command without providing any attribute values). When you do not run
SDMAIN interactively, you cannot turn prompting ON. Attribute prompting consists of a menu of all the
attributes you can choose to provide values for and a prompt for indicating which attributes you choose.
You then enter the numbers of the attributes desired and the system prompts for values for those
attributes. After you enter all the values, the system appends a string with an equivalent ATTRIBUTE-
LIST clause, to the command entered and executes the command. Each of these steps is described in detail
in the following discussion.
The Menu
The first thing you see when using the attribute prompting facility is the menu. It consists of a one-line
header describing the use of the attribute values to be entered and a list of attributes, each with a number.
You can choose any combination of attributes for any command. Number 1 on all menus is the all option
which prompts for all of the displayed attributes. Numbering for the remaining prompts, however, can
vary (and often does) from menu to menu. A sample menu for creating an entity of entity-type RECORD is
displayed below:
Choose the attribute(s) to be assigned a value
1 all 8 VPLUS-ALIAS 15 ENTRY-TEXT
2 SENSITIVITY 9 STANDARD-ALIAS 16 HEADING-TEXT
3 ID-NUMBER 10 HP SQL-ALIAS 17 PATH-REPORT
4 BYTE-LENGTH 11 DEFAULT 18 HP-CONDITION-VALUE
5 COBOL-ALIAS 12 DESCRIPTION 19 HP SQL-SELECT-COMMAND
6 IMAGE-ALIAS 13 EDIT-MASK
7 PASCAL-ALIAS 14 ENTITY-LONG-NAME