Data Definition Language (DDL) Reference Manual

Definition Attributes
Data Definition Language (DDL) Reference Manual—529431-004
6-10
HELP
HELP
The HELP clause assigns help text, used by Pathmaker-generated requesters, to a
group or elementary item in a DEFINITION statement.
help-text
is either a string of ASCII or national characters (enclosed in quotation marks) or
the name of a constant in the open dictionary. The value of the constant must be a
string of ASCII or national characters.
Single lines of text must not exceed 77 characters if you plan to generate a Pathmaker
application; help text must be less than or equal to 77 characters to fit on a Pathmaker
screen. If a single line of text does exceed 77 characters, you will receive a warning
message.
The ASCII quotation mark character (") can be represented within a help text string by
using two consecutive quotation marks ("").
Help text appears on DDL schema listings. Help text is displayed on the screen when
an end user requests help from NonStop Transaction Services/MP (NonStop TS/MP)
applications generated by the Pathmaker product.
Use of a comma between help text strings is optional. If you do not use a comma, you
must delimit consecutive help strings by blanks or carriage returns. (Example 6-8 on
page 6-11 shows both cases.)
Help text cannot be specified for any of these:
•
Level-66 RENAMES clauses
•
Level-88 condition-name clauses
•
Record names
•
File creation information
If a definition or record that includes help text refers to a definition that also includes
help text, the help text in the referring definition or record overrides the help text in the
referenced definition.
Note. The DDL compiler ignores this clause when generating host-language source code.
HELP help-text [ [,] help-text ]...