Supported Field Types
See also:
CHAR fields represent character
values. Any data can be entered.
FPL script considerations:
Addition operations on character fields are treated as concatenation.
e.g.
set A = 'Happy';
set B = A + ' Xmas';
A and B are both defined as CHAR
fields. B will contain the value 'Happy Xmas'.
Resource mapping considerations:
CHAR fields can be mapped to any character-type resource
field type e.g. CHAR, VARCHAR, LONGVARCHAR etc, plus the TIME type.
NUMERIC fields represent numeric
values with a specified number of decimal places. The number of decimal
places attribute in the field properties dialog specifies the number
of decimal places allowed.
Numeric fields are formatted according to the formatting language in use for the
form being executed. Formatting commas and periods are inserted according
to the formatting rules for the language. The formats can be viewed in the
language properties dialog (Tools ->
System Preferences -> Internationalization, then select a language and
click Properties). Similarly, commas and periods can be entered by the end
user.
FPL script considerations:
All mathematical operations are possible. (See FPL Script Command Syntax for more
information). Rounding will be applied to the results of calculations as
specified by the rounding options in the field properties dialog.
Resource mapping considerations:
NUMERIC fields can be mapped to any numeric-type resource
field type e.g. NUMBER, DECIMAL, INTEGER, SMALLINT, FLOAT etc.
Currency fields are treated the same as numeric fields
except that the decimal places are always displayed to the end user. e.g. for a currency field with 2 decimal places, a value of
99 is displayed as 99.00, a value of 23.1 is displayed as 23.10 etc. The number
of allowable decimal points defaults to 2 and can be changed if required. (See Numeric fields for more information)
INTEGER fields represent numeric
values with no decimal places.
Integer fields are formatted according to the formatting language in use for the
form being executed. Formatting commas or periods are inserted according
to the formatting rules for the language. The formats can be viewed in the
language properties dialog (Tools ->
System Preferences -> Internationalization, then select a language and
click Properties). Similarly, commas or periods can be entered by the end user.
FPL script considerations:
All mathematical operations are possible. (See FPL Script Command Syntax for more
information)
Resource mapping considerations:
INTEGER fields can be mapped to any numeric-type resource
field type e.g. NUMBER, DECIMAL, INTEGER, SMALLINT, FLOAT etc. When reading in
data from a mapped resource field with decimal points, the decimal points will
be removed.
BOOLEAN fields can only have a value of 'Y' or 'N', and the
default value is 'N'.
Boolean fields can only be displayed with a display type of
checkbox. If a boolean checkbox field is marked as
mandatory, a missing mandatory field message will be generated unless the
checkbox is checked. This can be used to ensure a user clicks a checkbox e.g.
"Click here to accept these conditions......".
FPL script considerations:
BOOLEAN fields can be queried as follows:
if [ A = 'Y']......
Resource mapping considerations:
BOOLEAN fields can be mapped to any character-type or bit-type
resource field type e.g. CHAR, VARCHAR, BIT etc.
DATE fields represent a date.
When a date value is specified in the Ebase designer
e.g. as a date literal in a script (as shown below) or as a default value for a
field, the format must correspond with the format specified in parameter
Ufs.dateFormat in the Ebase Startup
Parameters file.
Date fields are formatted according to the formatting language in use for the
form being executed. The formats can be viewed in the language properties
dialog (Tools -> System Preferences -> Internationalization, then select a
language and click Properties). Similarly, date fields entered by the end user
should be in the same format.
FPL script considerations:
Mathematical operations on DATE fields can be performed.
set F1 = '01/04/2002' + 10;
will set the F1 field equal to
11/04/2002.
FPL functions:
|
addmonth |
adds one or more months to a date |
|
addweek |
adds one or more weeks to a date |
|
addyear |
adds one or more years to a date |
|
datepart |
a string representing part of a date e.g. Wednesday, August etc |
|
datetostring |
converts a date field to a character field and optionally applies regionalized formatting |
|
dayofweek |
returns a string representing the day of the week e.g. Friday |
|
formatdate |
formats the date as a string e.g. Tue July 10, 1996 |
|
joindatetime |
see DATETIME type |
|
splitdate |
see DATETIME type |
See FPL Script syntax
for more details on the use of these functions.
Resource mapping considerations:
DATE fields can be mapped to resource fields of type DATE
(date, but not time) or TIMESTAMP (both date and time).
Time fields can be used to represent a time of day to an accuracy
of one thousandth of a second. Ebase time fields are not affected by time zones
i.e. a time value of 09:30 entered by an end user will always display with the
value 09:30 even when the time zone of the operating system is changed.
Similarly time fields transferred to databases or XML documents wil contain the
value as entered by the end user and will not be adjusted for time zones.
The display of time fields is configured using the date/time field options (in the Presentation tab of Field Properties). Options are available to display time fields as format hh:mm, hh:mm:ss or hh:mm:ss.ttt.
By default, time fields are displayed as hh:mm:ss.ttt using
a 24 hour clock, but note that the :ss.ttt portion is only displayed if the
field contains a value other than zero e.g. a time field with value
10:30:00.000 will be displayed as 10:30, a time field with value
10:30:49.000 will be displayed as 10:30:49.
Time fields can be entered as either hh:mm, hh:mm:ss, or hh:mm:ss.ttt. The entry of a time field is not affected by the
display format.
The presentation and validation of time fields does not vary
based on language.
FPL script considerations:
When mathematical operations are performed on TIME fields,
all values are interpreted as a whole number of seconds.
e.g. to add 30 seconds to a time
field:
set TIME1 = TIME1 + 30;
to add 30 minutes to a time field:
set TIME1 = TIME1 + (30 * 60);
FPL functions:
|
joindatetime |
see DATETIME type |
|
splittime |
see DATETIME type |
|
timetostring |
converts a time field to a character field |
See FPL Script syntax
for more details on the use of these functions.
Resource mapping considerations:
TIME fields can be mapped to resource fields of type TIME or
TIMESTAMP. When mapped to a TIMESTAMP field (which contains both date and time)., the date portion of the TIMESTAMP is ignored.
Datetime fields can be used to represent a moment in time to
an accuracy of one second. The moment in time consists of a date and a time.
Ebase datetime fields are not affected by timezones and behave the same as TIME fields with regard to time zone considerations.
Datetime fields are displayed as a date part followed by a
time part.
The date part is formatted as for DATE
fields.
The time part is formatted as for TIME
fields.
FPL script considerations:
When mathematical operations are performed on DATETIME
fields, all values are interpreted as a whole number of seconds.
e.g. to add 30 seconds to a
datetime field:
set DATETIME1 = DATETIME1 + 30;
to add 30 minutes to a datetime field:
set DATETIME1 = DATETIME1 + (30 * 60);
FPL functions:
A DATETIME field can be split into its date and time
components using the splitdate and splittime functions e.g.
set DATE1 = splitdate(DATETIME1);
set TIME1 = splittime(DATETIME1);
where DATE1 is a field of type DATE
and TIME1 is a field of type TIME.
Similarly a DATETIME field can be created from a DATE and a
TIME field using the joindatetime
function e.g.
set DATETIME1= joindatetime(DATE1, TIME1);
These functions are intended to allow TIMESTAMP resource fields (which contain both date and time) to be retrieved from a database or XML document, split into their constituent date and time parts for display to the end user, then re-combined for update of the database or XML document.
See FPL Script syntax for more details on the use of these functions.
Resource mapping considerations:
DATETIME fields can be mapped to resource fields of type
DATE, TIME or TIMESTAMP. When mapped to a DATE field,
the time portion is set to 00:00:00 on write operations to a resource.
When mapped to a TIME field, the date portion is set to the current date on
write operations to a resource.