Searching the Help
To search for information in the Help, type a word or phrase in the Search box. When you enter a group of words, OR is inferred. You can use Boolean operators to refine your search.
Results returned are case insensitive. However, results ranking takes case into account and assigns higher scores to case matches. Therefore, a search for "cats" followed by a search for "Cats" would return the same number of Help topics, but the order in which the topics are listed would be different.
Search for | Example | Results |
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A single word | cat
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Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats". |
A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase. |
"cat food" (quotation marks) |
Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase. |
Search for | Operator | Example |
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Two or more words in the same topic |
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Either word in a topic |
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Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase |
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Topics that contain one string and do not contain another | ^ (caret) |
cat ^ mouse
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A combination of search types | ( ) parentheses |
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Adding a key
A key is an identifying field in a file, used when queries are processed so all fields in a record do not need to be searched for set criteria. A field or fields in a key must be defined as a field or fields in the database dictionary record. A key may be added in a production system without a system restart.
When a database dictionary file is created through Forms Designer, Service Manager automatically uses the first field defined on the associated format to create a Unique key. Manually modify the database dictionary record to add the necessary keys to support on-line and reporting queries, as well as sort sequences. Many other default system files, set up in the base system, may need to be changed, based on your individual search and reporting requirements. This section details the manual addition and manipulation of database dictionary record/file keys.
Note: If records already exist in the file when you add a key, updating the database dictionary record will cause Service Manager to automatically perform an index regeneration.
If you add keys to a file that contains records, be careful when defining key types. For example, do not define a new key as No Nulls (no blank values) if records exist in the file that contain no data in the particular field(s) comprising the key.
Each record not containing a value in the key field would require an update, populating the field with data. The updates must be performed prior to adding the No Nulls key in order to satisfy the new key definition.
A CREATE INDEX statement is generated when a new key is defined in the dbdict.
Note: If Service Manager determines it does not have rights to CREATE a TABLE it writes all database definition language (DDL) into files in the <RUN directory>/ddl
folder and accepts changes to the dbdict without performing the CREATE INDEX operation.
Related topics
Modifying a key
Deleting a key
Arrays
Structures
Arrayed structures
Alias fields
Methods for updating database dictionary records
Methods for deleting database dictionary records
Delete a key
Add a key as the first key
Insert a key between other keys
Add keys to bottom of the key list
Modify keys: Nulls and duplicates to unique