Child Information
Name:
Date of Birth:
Child Information
Name:
Date of Birth:
Ralph T Smith
11 November 1957
Susan B Jones
17 July 1959
We will visualize a data record in which the data fields are separated by
commas and terminated with an exclamation point, thus:
John,P,Smith,Director,51,19710917,Mary,T,Smith,2,Ralph,T,Smith, 19571111,
Susan,B, Jones, 19590717!
The generic format description must allow for a variable number of
children, which is made specific for each employee. The Object segment
describing this record would be (TSDN is case-insensitive):
OBJECT = personnelRecord,SEQUENCE,(name , title , number , dateOfHire ,
nameOfSpouse , numberOfChildren , numberOfChildren(childlnformation)) ;
OBJECT = name , SEQUENCE , (givenName , initial , familyName) ;
OBJECT = nameOfSpouse , SEQUENCE , (givenName , initial , familyName) ;
OBJECT = childlnformation , SEQUENCE , (name , dateOfBirth) ;
The interpretation is straightforward except perhaps for the numberOfChild-
ren(childlnformation). The TSDN syntax here uses a numeric variable (num
berOfChildren) adjacent to an opening parenthesis to indicate a quantity-
of.
The components of name are individually identified, and thus become data
fields, requiring the comma separators. This allows searching on
familyName, for example.
The complete File would be a set of these records:
OBJECT = PersonnelFile , SET , +(PersonnelRecord) ;
If this file is defined as a system-available file, this identification may
be made by:
FILEID = PersonnelFile , NONE , <fileName> ;
Here the external file name is the <fileName>, the NONE indicates no
special protocols or conditions, and PersonnelFile is the TSDN-internal
object name for the file.
It now remains to define the formats of each individual data field. Each
format definition consists of a syntax code plus a length or terminator.
Some of the syntax codes defined in the specification are:
B primitive bit data field; numerical binary unsigned uncomplemented
A primitive (undefined) character (alphanumeric) data field
I integer character string (ISO 6093 NR1; 8824 char int)
D decimal character string (ISO 6093 NR2; 8824 char dec)
