Alias fields

An alias field is a field that has a different name but the same index, level, and type as an existing field. Alias fields are used to streamline file maintenance; force fully keyed queries, such as those in the Incident Management and Service Desk applications; and facilitate virtual joining. Alias fields are only supported for scalar fields of the following data types: number, character, date/time, logical. The functionality is not designed to work for other data types like arrays and structures.

If regular purge and archive tasks are performed on files with different field names for the search criteria, such as close.time in the problem and probsummary files, msg.time in the msglog file, and evtime in the eventin file, you can build an alias in each file called archive.time and then perform all archive activity based on archive.time without regard to the file name.

In Service Desk and Incident Management, alias keys are used to ensure that a fully keyed query is performed each time an argument is entered from a record list. For more information see the Incident Management Help.

Source fields are defined as an alias when they must be defined as both a normal link and a virtual join; and the target file or field is different. For example, in the devicepc database dictionary record and the device.pc format and link records, the vj.logical.name field is the alias of the logical.name field.