PowerFORM RTS uses records to communicate with application programs. Records contain the areas for all the fields defined in a form descriptor with the exception of static fields. The record parts assigned to these fields are record data fields. Records have an area where an application program can change the attributes of each field. PowerFORM RTS then posts the status of each changed field. This area is called a field-control field.
All the record data fields and field-control fields are generically referred to as record data areas.
Data storage format
The format for storing data in a record data field depends on the data type.
UNICODE is available, if COBOL program is compiled with RCS (UCS2) option.
The following explains the types of data that can be processed in the various supported fields:
Numeric fields
External decimal numbers are stored. For details, see "Format of numeric fields" below.
Text fields
Alphanumeric or UNICODE (UTF8) is stored.
UCS2 fields
UNICODE (UCS2) is stored. If the COBOL program is encoded to use UTF-32, the actual values that are stored are going to be in Unicode. In order to convert the form descriptor, you would use the CNVMED2UTF32 Command. For further details, please refer to the NetCOBOL User's Guide.
Format of numeric fields
A numeric field is represented by an external decimal integer.
Table 1.1 lists the data format of external decimal integers.
